A 50-year-old man was given two life sentences on Tuesday by the High Court in Thohoyandou after being found guilty of repeatedly raping his two minor daughters for three years.

According to the police, the man had raped the two girls repeatedly from January 2014 until February 2016.

"The man would sneak into the room the girls were sharing around midnight and violate them," police spokesperson Colonel Moatshe Ngoepe said in a statement.

"The ordeal resulted in the youngest falling pregnant and that's when the matter was eventually reported to the police. A case of rape was opened, and the man was subsequently arrested."

The man used to live with his two daughters in a village outside Thohoyandou.

Limpopo Police commissioner Lieutenant General Nneke Ledwaba welcomed the long prison sentence.

In a separate, unrelated case on Monday, the Polokwane High Court sentenced 39-year-old Joseph Mafifi to an effective 12 years imprisonment for killing his girlfriend.

Ngoepe said that on March 18, 2018, during the early hours of the morning, police received a report of a woman being stabbed at one of the local farms in Swartwater, Limpopo.

"When the police arrived at the scene, they found the lifeless body of a 44-year-old woman who had been stabbed multiple times," said Ngoepe.

"The deceased was identified as Simangele Sibanda from Zimbabwe."

Mafifi fled the scene and was later tracked down and arrested at his home village in Moletemane, Botswana. He was then extradited to South Africa to stand trial.

During the trial, Mafifi revealed that he had killed his girlfriend for terminating her pregnancy without his consent.

"Violent men of this nature should not be allowed in our society and the police will ensure that people involved in crimes against women and children would be sent to prison indefinitely," Ledwaba said.