A court has sentenced a man who stabbed his girlfriend over 10 times before chopping off her head and stashing it in his fridge to 23 years in prison.

Elhadji Adama Kebe accused his girlfriend of cheating on him with a Nigerian man and murdered her in a jealous rage during a furious row on 25th April 2019.

He was arrested at the nearby shop he managed the following day and taken into preventive custody, where he has since remained.

He pleaded guilty in February this year to killing Sibongile Zenzile, aged 29, and mutilating her corpse at their flat in Kempton Park, South Africa.

The prosecution had originally asked for life imprisonment for the defendant, who burst into tears when he told the court “Sibongile was my girlfriend and partner and we did everything together; I deeply regret what happened” last month.

Judge Avrielle Maier-Frawley also noted that the defendant did not plead self-defence, did not challenge incriminating evidence, and was prepared to face the consequences for his actions.

She said: “He acknowledged he was at fault. That, in my view, is a first step on the long road to rehabilitation.”

The crime was Kebe’s first, and the evidence also reportedly showed that his girlfriend had also tried to stab him with a knife herself during the fatal row.

Kebe, 33, hails from Senegal and arrived in South Africa in 2016.

The autopsy on Zenzile’s body gave the cause of death as decapitation.

The South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg sentenced Kebe to 23 years in prison for murder and two years for violation of the corpse. The two sentences will run concurrently.