Limpopo man who killed his uncle over food gets 17 years
Thabang Madiseng was sentenced in the Polokwane High Court for the 2022 murder of Lucas Madiseng, who was assaulted at his Mathapisa Village homestead and died five weeks later.
The Polokwane High Court has sentenced a 30-year-old man to 17 years’ direct imprisonment for the murder of his 66-year-old uncle in Mathapisa Village, in Limpopo’s Nebo policing area.
Thabang Madiseng was convicted of murder on Thursday, 17 September 2026. The court sentenced him on Tuesday, 22 September 2026 and declared him unfit to possess a firearm, according to the South African Police Service.
Lucas Madiseng was severely assaulted at his homestead on 2 February 2022 at about 20:00. Emergency services took him to the nearest hospital, where he was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. He remained conscious for some time after the assault but could not speak because of the severity of his injuries, and was unable to give police a statement about what had happened.
The matter was first registered at Nebo SAPS as an attempted murder case. Madiseng told police he knew nothing about the incident and said he had not been home when his uncle was assaulted.
Lucas Madiseng remained in hospital until 17 March 2022, when he died of his injuries. The case was then reclassified as murder.
Detective Sergeant Lebogang Raymond Mabitsela took over the investigation and established that the deceased had been assaulted by his nephew, who lived with him at the same residence. Police investigations found that a dispute between the two men over food had escalated into the assault.
Mabitsela gathered the evidence that linked Madiseng to the crime and secured a warrant for his arrest. Madiseng was arrested on 23 December 2024 and appeared several times in the Nebo Magistrate’s Court before the matter was transferred to the Polokwane High Court for trial.
The Provincial Commissioner of Police in Limpopo, Lieutenant General Jan Scheepers, commended the detective for his work on the case.
“The successful conviction and sentencing demonstrate the importance of thorough investigations and the determination of our members, and the prosecution to ensure that perpetrators of serious crimes are brought to justice, regardless of the time it takes,” Scheepers said.
He welcomed the sentence, which the police service said brings closure to a case that stemmed from an act of violence within a family setting. The account above rests on the police service’s summary of the case and the sentencing, not on the court record itself.
Source: South African Police Service (SAPS), Murder accused sentenced to 17 years’ imprisonment for killing elderly uncle in Mathapisa village
