The story we ran in two previous issues, of a 34-year-old Katlehong rape survivor, has not only touched the hearts of our readers, but has helped the traumatised single mother find a path to justice and possible closure as the pending arrest of the men allegedly responsible for her rape gets closer.
For this, Kathorus MAIL would also like to commend the head of the Katlehong-based SAPS’s Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) unit, Col Johannes Mdluli, as well as the Gauteng provincial office of the SAPS, for getting the case back on the court roll.
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Our relentless efforts to restore the victim’s dignity and have the men who allegedly gang-raped her arrested are presently taking shape as the suspects are being hunted down and could soon face the full might of the law.
All this came about after the victim contacted our offices and poured her broken heart out. The saddest part of her story was when she described how her children were eventually taken away from her by the authorities after she was deemed unfit to be with them due to the mental stress the rape had caused.
We were so touched by her story that we decided to stand up and join her in her battle to seek justice for her and her estranged offspring. Rest assured those allegedly responsible for the victim’s trauma will soon be dealt with by the police and the country’s laws.
The law must deal with mob justice
Contrary to recent good news about a group of community members from the Zonkizizwe informal housing settlement who apprehended a known murder suspect and later handed him over to the local SAPS, an innocent Mpumalanga preacher and his nephew who were falsely accused of murdering two young girls were not so lucky.
The young preacher and his nephew were both allegedly murdered by a frenzied mob during a brutal attack, which turned out to be another case of mistaken identity.
Grieving family and friends of the two murdered relatives later revealed that their loved ones’ gruesome deaths came soon after the missing girls, aged six and seven, were found in a shallow grave after their mysterious disappearance. The two men were, without any proof, rounded up and accused of murdering the two young sibling after allegedly sexually assaulting both of them.
The murder of the two innocent relatives was further aggravated by more false claims by the mob that one of the young girls had been used for ritual purposes.
The preacher and his nephew’s homes gutted and their personal belongings vandalised and destroyed before they were finally killed by the frenzied mob. Bystanders disclosed that the two men were hunted down after they were allegedly “smelled out” by a local traditional doctor who revealed them as the people responsible for the sisters’ death.
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Upon further investigations by the police, it was later revealed that both the preacher and his nephew were innocent. Typically, as in most such cases, the police have now cleared the two dead relatives of the murder of the two girls, sending many of the mob-justice perpetrators into hiding for fear of being arrested for their involvement in thekilling of the innocent pair.
Of course, we ask, what help is this revelation to their grieving families? Their spouses have lost loving partners and their children have been left without family heads and breadwinners.
As the community awaits the eventual arrest of those who pursued and prompted the murder of the two innocent men, many more are demanding to know the fate of the witch doctor who allegedly linked the innocent preacher and his nephew to the death of the two girls.
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The scourge of mob-justice vigilantes will have to be seriously addressed by the police, and those involved will have to face the full might of the law. It is now up to the Mpumalanga police to arrest those behind the attack against the innocent preacher and his nephew.
