Reiger Park residents call for death penalty to be reinstated

Reiger Park residents, and the rest of Gauteng, calls for the death penalty to be reinstated, after a spate of brutal murders sparked outrage.

Referring to the recent spate of woman and child killings in Gauteng, FF Plus councillor in the Johannesburg metro, Franco de Lange, questions how many innocent people will be murdered while the government protects murderers.

“A person who takes the lives of others deserves the death sentence. Our Constitution guarantees the ‘Right to Life’. How many times can a person commit a murder before that person loses that right?” he asks.

“While August is Women’s Month, a woman was stabbed more than 50 times with a knife in her chest, back and stomach. Her body was found along the road in Bryanston.”

Meanwhile, the Tibbets family recently lost their three-year old boy, Luke, after a stray bullet took his life, while he was sitting on his mother’s lap.

One of the accused has already been charged with 12 counts of murder and attempted murder.

In Ramaphosa, residents and the Van Wyk family are still struggling to come to grips with the loss of a three-year-old boy, Cuburne, whose partially burnt body was found at a mine dump in Reiger Park, on Saturday, August 9.

In July, this year, hijackers left residents and the Morris family grieving for Taegrin Morris (4).

The child was dragged to his death when hijackers sped off in his mother’s VW Golf while he was still stuck in the seatbelt, hanging outside of the vehicle.

A few months ago, the metro had to bury a 10-year-old boy who was also abducted by a stranger and found days later, hidden in the bushes along Elsburg Road.

He was allegedly raped, then killed and also partially burnt.

Hundreds of residents from the Ramaphosa informal settlement and Reiger Park marched to the Reiger Park Police Station on Wednesday, August 13, to protest against the recent killings of children, the poor police service and the high rate of crime.

The marchers also claimed that abolishing the death penalty had sparked a surge in crime and that bringing it back was a ‘must’ to curb crime.

South Africa abolished capital punishment almost two decades ago but, due to the recent upsurge in gruesome killings and other violent crimes, calls to bring it back have intensified.

– @FanieBoksburg