Killer mom gets parole
FREEDOM: Zulfa Jacobs released in March this year. File photo
A Mitchells Plain mother who smothered her two-year-old son to death has been released on parole.
Department of Correctional Services spokesperson Candice van Reenen confirmed that Zulfa Jacobs had been granted parole in February, reports Weekend Argus.
She was released in March.
“Jacobs was admitted into the system of Community Corrections and will serve the remainder of her sentence until its expiry in 2032,” DCS confirmed.
In 2012 Jacobs was sentenced to 20 years in jail for the murder of her son Tariq and also defeating and obstructing the course of justice.
In December 2011, Jacobs, a former crèche teacher, claimed that her son had vanished in the Town Centre in Mitchells Plain, and a search was launched.
His body was discovered in a bush behind the Imperial Primary School in Beacon Valley on December 31, 2011.
Jacobs had been separated from her husband and on the morning of the murder she said that Tariq had been crying and wanted porridge and there was none.
She shouted at him: “I wish you can go out my life. You make my life miserable. Ek maak jou sommer vrek.”
She took the boy to the bush, pushed his face in the sand, and when he was dead, covered his tiny body with a jacket and newspaper, later telling the court she was “worried he would get cold”.
She claimed she had killed her son out of love and protection as her husband allegedly wanted to take him away.
Last week, her parents, Shaheed and Soraya Jappie, confirmed to Weekend Argus that their daughter had been granted parole but was not available to speak to the media.
A relative of Tariq’s father, who asked not to be identified, said they had made peace with her parole.
Van Reenen said decisions of the Parole Board are influenced by a number of factors, including the offender’s response to rehabilitation, support systems in the community, and the probability of re-offending.