Durban – “The man took me to the bushes and hurt me… now I’m bleeding.”
These were the first words uttered by a 4-year-old Waterloo girl, who was led away from the safety of her home before she was allegedly raped, hanged and left for dead in a thicket at the weekend.
Her grandmother told how she could not contain her grief when she saw her grandchild’s bloodied body, which had been carried to a clearing by a passerby who had heard her muffled cries.
Her alleged rapist would have had to walk her along pathways between rows of small houses to where she was dumped.
Rope around her neck
“I was crying when I saw her. She was full of blood and the rope was around her neck. I don’t know who could have done this to a child,” she said.
The girl’s ordeal had started early on Saturday morning, when she was pulled from her bed by an unknown person.
“I had woken up early in the morning and left the child sleeping in the house. I closed the door and started to walk to my neighbour… I went back to my house and I was alarmed because the door was open,” she said.
The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the child, rushed inside to find her handbag upended on the floor.
Frantically, she roused her son who had been sleeping in an adjacent room, the first step in the frenzied mobilisation of the entire community to find the lost child.
“I called the police and no one answered the phone. I called the councillor and everyone was searching. My children saw a crowd of people gathered near the sports field and that is when they called me,” she said, crying.
“She is still in the hospital recovering and her mother is with her every day. I have no idea who would do something like this, but we want him caught.
Living in fear
“We live in fear now that he could be around the corner, what about all the other children here,” she said.
In another incident, a man accused of raping and murdering a 7-year-old girl, who was later found hanging from a tree, has appeared in the Madikwe Magistrate’s Court, North West police said on Wednesday.
David Mahlangu, 27, was arrested on Sunday in the Madikwe area after the girl went missing from her home on the same day, spokesperson Colonel Sabata Mokgwabone said in a statement.
The case was remanded until September 14.
South Africa Today – South Africa News
