The Regional Court in Umlazi has on Friday, 12 May 2023 sentenced a 27-year-old rapist to two terms of life terms imprisonment after the court found him guilty of the double rape of a 13-year-old girl at an informal settlement in G Section in Umlazi.
On 5 September 2022 the mother of a 13-year-old victim was furious to learn that her daughter did not go to school and as she was chastising the child, she was shocked to learn that the child’s uncle had instructed the girl not to go to school. The crying child confessed to the mother that she was raped by her uncle on the night of 3 September 2022.
The accused had lured his niece to his shack where she was raped.
Investigations also unearthed that he had also raped the girl in a similar manner in 2021. The Umlazi Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit’s (FCS) meticulous investigations proved beyond reasonable doubt that the child was raped and the accused was arrested.
After making several court appearances, he was removed from society and condemned to jail for the rest of his life.
In a separate incident, a 21-year-old man, Vusumuzi Mashaba Thabethe was handed a 46-year imprisonment sentence by the Esikhaleni Regional Court following his conviction for raping two women in one night in Esikhaleni.
On the evening of 2 September 2021, Thabethe, who was 19-years-old at the time, met a 21-year-old woman whom he had proposed love to a day before without any success. At knife-point he dragged the woman from Mabuyeni to the bushes where he raped her. The rape nightmare continued when he forcefully took her to a nearby stream where he continued raping her before letting her go.
Few hours later that night, Thabethe broke into a house at Madaka area and dragged a woman, 12 years his senior, to the bushes were he raped her at knife-point before robbing her of her cellphone.
Investigations by the Esikhaleni FCS Unit positively pointed out Thabethe as the suspect and he was charged accordingly.
He was also charged for kidnapping and house robbery.
These sentences are a clear indication that the South African Police Service in KwaZulu-Natal, through the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit, a specialised unit that probes crimes against women and children will continue to increase the heat on rapists and all those who perpetrate crimes against women and children, and ensure that rapists are removed from society, for good.
