Biopsychosocial Perspectives

Dané van der Vorst

Criminology 302: Biopsychosocial perspectives.

Assignment question; Read the profile of Moses Sithole and discuss critically all the mental and social factors that motivated his actions as a serial murderer.

South Africa is a rich country with a poor, heartless history. Amongst the history of South Africa, black South Africans had the largest impact gained from apartheid. With this turmoil many children were abused or left to fend for themselves as finances were sparse. One of these children was Moses Sithole, although he was a turned out to be a brutal serial killer and rapist. According to, (The Biography.com website, n.d.), Sithole was born in Vosloorus (Gauteng), he was dropped off at a local police station which in turn led him to be sent an orphanage in Kwazulu Natal, these actions had taken place after his father (the breadwinner) had passed away. With a few years having passed he ultimately ran away only to find no refuge and this was the start of his fantasies taking place. There are several mental and social factors which have contributed to Sithole having turned into was some call a monster.

Although there were obvious social factors, Sithole had a rough childhood in terms of abuse and neglect. The death of a parent especially for a younger child has a major affect on their mental state, much like object permanence. Piaget concluded that an infant from the ages of 8 to 9 months do not understand or acknowledge that an object is still present even when out of sight, instead they believe that the object has now completely disappeared out of existence (Fournier, 2018). Although not identical to object permanence the same rule applies, although Sithole may not have thought his father had been removed from existence, he might have abandoned him, since he could not understand the concept of death (Health Psychology Consultancy,