36-year-old Mandla Dlamini who is a traditional healer from KwaDabeka has been found guilty of rape and kidnapping by the Pinetown Regional Court following a lengthy investigation into rape accusations labelled against him by two women. These incidents of rape occurred in August and September 2019.
In September 2019, Dlamini met his victim on a taxi to Port Shepstone. He lured her into believing that he was a traditional healer who could heal her of a bad omen that was plaguing her.
He promised to perform a cleansing ceremony which would be done at the victim’s home in Ixopo. After the cleansing was done, Dlamini persuaded the victim’s family to let her go with him to the beach in Durban where he was to perform further cleansing in the sea.
After the second cleansing the victim was taken to Dlamini’s home in Claremont outside Pinetown where she was given a traditional concoction to drink and subsequently felt dizzy and passed out. When she regained her conscious she realised she had been raped and she opened a rape case at KwaDabeka SAPS.
Another victim of Dlamini’s was a 27-year-old woman from Port Shepstone who opened a rape case at KwaDabeka SAPS. The victim told police that Dlamini had come to her Port Shepstone home to perform a cleansing ceremony and informed her family that he needed to take her to Durban to perform a further cleansing.
The same modus operandi was used on his second victim. She was locked in Dlamini’s home for several days and given a concoction to drink which made her dizzy and led to her collapsing.
She eventually managed to escape and opened a rape case at KwaDabeka SAPS.
A team of detectives from the Pinetown Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit set up a sting operation that led to the arrest of Dlamini. He had boarded a taxi from Empangeni to Durban to meet his “client” and when he alighted from the taxi he was arrested by the police on Warwick Avenue in Durban.
The cases were heard by the Pinetown Regional Court which consequently found him guilty on both counts of rape and kidnapping. He was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment and an additional five years imprisonment on 17 November 2021.
