Mystery Of Tragic Farmhouse Fire

A Wellington teacher and her husband have died in a blaze that razed their home amid rumours about an extramarital affair

- Almari Wessels

IT HAD been a chaotic day and it was late in the evening before she had the chance to contact her best friend, who’d been begging her to go for a drink because she needed to confide in someone.

“Hi, Soens. Sorry, I was busy all day. I’ll call you tomorrow,” Anelma le Roux wrote in a WhatsApp message to Sunita van Dyk at 10.06 pm on Tuesday 9 May.

But for Sunita there’d be no tomorrow. In the early hours of 10 May the 31-year old primary school teacher, her husband, farm manager Jacques (30), and their dog, Skollie, burnt to death in their home on Oakdene Farm outside Wellington in the Western Cape.

And Anelma (31) would never find out what Sunita had wanted to tell her.

“Something was bothering her,” says the businesswoman, who owns a décor company in Wellington.

Anelma heard of the tragedy when her ex-husband called her in the middle of the night, saying the Van Dyks’ farmhouse had burnt to the ground.

When she couldn’t get hold of Jacques or Sunita she jumped in her car, still in her pyjamas, and drove to the house.

The life the young couple had been building in the five years since their wedding had gone up in flames – and Anelma was devastated when she was told the charred bodies found in the bathroom were those of the people she’d been friends with since school.

At first it seemed like a horrific accident – but the rubble of the farmhouse was practically still smouldering when the rumour mill kicked into overdrive.

Days before the couple’s joint funeral allegations of an affair between Sunita and Danie le Roux, headmaster of the prestigious Laerskool Paarl Gimnasium where she was a teacher, were leaked to the media.

“I’m so upset,” Anelma says. “Everyone is talking about the alleged affair but there are so many things about the fire itself that don’t make sense.