“Mommy is fighting.” This is the statement alleged to have been made by Hillary Gardee’s three-year-old daughter to family members after she was abducted on Friday, Mbombela mayor Sibongile Makushe told Sowetan on Tuesday.
Makushe, a close family friend, said she visited the Gardee family over the weekend after finding out about the abduction.
Gardee’s lifeless body was found outside Mbombela in Mpumalanga on Tuesday after she went missing on April 29. Gardee was last seen when she went shopping at a plaza in Mbombela and her killer later dropped off her daughter close to where Gardee lives. The child immediately gave a clue to the neighbours who found out about what had happened to her mom.
Her bloodied body was found by timber plantation farm workers about 500m from the R532 connecting Mbombela and Sabie. The area is deserted and is mainly used by hitchhikers and farm workers.
Gardee is the daughter of former EFF secretary-general and attorney Godrich Gardee.
Makushe said she was devastated to learn of Gardee’s passing, adding she was at an IDP meeting when the news of her death broke. “Apparently, the three-year-old was busy saying to the family that ‘mommy is fighting’ and repeating that ‘mommy is fighting’. That’s when we realised she didn’t go of her own free will but something happened to her,” she said.
Makushe condemned violence against women, saying the rate at which women were being killed should be treated with the urgency it deserved. “Any woman can face what happened to Hillary. I’m very devastated. I don’t even know what to say,” she said.
Makushe said she could not think of anyone who’d want to harm Gardee. “She was always happy and bubbly. She just went to the shop and it’s not like she went to a club or was out late. She just went to the shop,” Makushe said.
Gardee, 28, a post graduate student and also the owner of a company, was described as a young woman determined to build a successful company in SA’s struggling economy.
0 of 3
“When she grew up, she was just a bubbly child. I’d always joke they were as loud as their mom because her mom was also just a special person. She was a determined young lady, pushed herself because she wanted to study IT and got her first degree and was pursuing another one,” Makushe said.
Speaking on Gardee as a parent, Makushe said she had questioned why she wanted to adopt a child.
“I remember when her mother was still alive and Hillary wanted to adopt a child. I remember asking her why she wanted to adopt a child and she said the opportunities that she has and what God has blessed them with, she would want to share with a child who didn’t have the same opportunities,” she said.
Gardee’s last post on social media was posted on the morning she disappeared. She jokingly wrote on Facebook: “We thought April was long, May is gonna be extra long with one day and salary ye this month must last us till end of next month.”
The post was indicative of the person she was all throughout that social media platform.
A woman with her own company, Gardee posted a lot about the struggles of ordinary South Africans, from how expensive food was to how one has to have multiple jobs going if they wanted to sustain their livelihoods.
A business woman, she also posted about the struggles of maintaining relationships with one’s clients, despite “bullying” from the very same clients.
According to her Facebook account, she also worked at Revine Technical College in White River. When Sowetan called the technical college, an emotional woman who said she was Gardee’s aunt said she was a very good person.
“I don’t know what to say? What can I say? She was a good person, she helped a lot of people and cared a lot. She was determined and wanted to develop her company and would often meet with clients,” the woman who did not want to give her name said.
Minister Bheki Cele, who visited the Gardee family home on Tuesday evening, said he had given his team of investigators less than 72 hours to find leads that could result in the arrest of the perpetrators.
“As the ministry it is our job to do investigation and we believe we are going to arrest them sooner. We usually give ourselves 72 hours to make an arrest but this time we are giving ourselves less than that,” said Cele.
Gardee's family members including her brother and deputy education minister Regina Mhaule were seen at the site where her body was discovered.
They were armed with a shovel and pleaded with the media not to take pictures of them as they were about to perform a ritual of collecting Gardee’s spirit.
It took them about five minutes to speak with the deceased’s spirit and were then seen picking some of the bloodied soil with the shovel and putting it in a plastic bag before leaving.
