NELSPRUIT – A man already serving 115 years’ imprisonment for murder and rape, appeared in the Nelspruit Regional Court on January 14, on additional charges. Lourenzo Bedene Mazuze (33) is presently serving two life sentences for the gang rape of a women and the murder of
Mr Georg Müller (73).
Mazuze who was a member of a gang, waited for, attacked and tortured a woman and her friend in January 2008 in the Malalane area. On her arrival home three men, including Mazuze, emerged from the nearby bush. One pushed her to the ground and started hitting her while the other wrestled with her partner. They overpowered him and took her inside the house asking for money. Her partner outside was being choked with an electrical cord and the men also poured acid into his mouth.
The woman was raped by two of the men and then taken with them as they ransacked the house. She was raped twice more and the men all showered before fleeing in her partner’s vehicle.
They attempted to run him over but he managed to crawl out of the way.
In another attack, less than a month later, Müller and his friends and family were ambushed in their house on a farm near Malalane. They were having a braai on the verandah when a group of men suddenly emerged from the cane field running towards them and shooting.
As they entered the house they fired point-blank at Mr Henko Cilliers and wounded him in the arm. Müller, who had his wife’s weapon on him, fired at the suspects and they fled while returning fire, which was allegedly when Müller was hit.
The wounded Mazuze was found next to the N4 near the farm, and arrested on
February 22, 2008.
Capt Louis Christopher Stander testified in court that items found on Mazuze also linked him to a spate of robberies in the area in 2007. He said the house and farm robbery complaints stopped shortly after Mazuze’s arrest.
He also testified that on the day of the arrest, they received an anonymous call about a wounded man lying next to the N4. “I found the suspect, who was bleeding from a bullet wound in the buttock and lower arm.
He told me he had been shot by motorists while he was hitchhiking.”
Stander said that after searching the suspect, he found a wallet containing old South African banknotes dating from the ’70s and ’80s, which was linked to the robbery of the Morgan family in Barberton.
Prosecutor Ms Elise du Plessis said she had eight dockets and 23 counts against Mazuze. The charges ranged from attempted murder to armed robbery.
She said Mazuze, a Mozambique national, would use his passport to travel to and from South Africa just before and after attacks on farms and houses.
Magistrate Mr André Geldenhuys postponed the case to April 16.
