Four life terms for Zimbabwean serial rapist

A Zimbabwean man who kidnapped a series of women in Pretoria’s streets and kept them captive at gunpoint while repeatedly raping them has been sentenced to four life terms and over 115 years imprisonment.

Morris Shungu, 31, who pleaded guilty to 16 charges ranging from rape and kidnapping to robbery with aggravating circumstances and being an illegal immigrant stood with a bowed head as Judge David Makhoba sentenced him in the High Court in Pretoria today.

Shungu admitted that he had between September 2015 and February 2016 kidnapped and raped five women after accusing them on Pretoria’s streets early in the morning and forcing them to accompany him to deserted places.

All of his victims were on their way to work or school when they were kidnapped.

He held all of his victims captive for hours, assaulted them and raped four of them repeatedly while holding them captive for hours during the course of the day.

One of his victims, an intensive care nursing sister, was raped nine times and stabbed in both legs while another was choked and throttled with Shungu threatening to kill her. Another was forced to undress before Shungu washed her body and panty in a river.

Judge Makhoba said the aggravating factors in the case by far outweighed the single mitigating factor, which was that Shungu had pleaded guilty, thereby sparing his victims from having to relive their ordeals in the witness stand.

He said it had not been pleasant to read about what ordeal Shungu’s victims were subjected to in the victim impact reports.

He said the aggravating factors were so numerous that he could spend a whole day listing them, but highlighted some of the factors, including that Shungu had forced his victims to have intercourse with a stranger at gunpoint, which was so traumatic that some of the women have still not recovered.

Shungu did not use a condom, held his victims against their will and raped some of the women more than once, in addition robbing them of their personal possessions. He also subjected the women to awful embarrassment and further trauma by forcing them to kiss him or stroke his penis.

Judge Makhoba said it was aggravating that Shungu was a Zimbabwean citizen who came to South Africa without any documents and committed crimes against the country’s citizens. South African citizens felt very aggrieved about this and it gave so-called economic migrants a bad name.

It was also aggravating that Shungu had a previous recent conviction for assault, the Judge said.

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