Nelspruit – praag.org

Pupil beaten to death a private school

Mpumalanga plans to close a black private school that has been at the centre of a sjambokking scandal.

Paballo Seane, 19, a Grade 12 pupil at Cefups Academy, which is on a farm 11km outside Nelspruit, died in hospital over a week ago after allegedly being sjambokked by a teacher. She was buried on Saturday in her home town, Bloemfontein, in the Free State.

The provincial education department is withdrawing the school’s registration.

Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza said on Saturday that if an investigation by the education department found that Seane’s death had been caused by corporal punishment the school would be closed.

“We have a law that abolished corporal punishment,” he said. “We must find other creative ways to discipline children.”

A report into Seane’s death has been handed to Mpumalanga education MEC Reginah Mhaule but its contents are secret.

But more evidence of corporal punishment at the school has emerged from witnesses, one of whom is Deputy Minister of Higher Education Mduduzi Manana, a former pupil of Cefups Academy.

“There were definitely incidents of sjambokking, which I recall,” Manana told The Times.

Manana was deputy president of the students’ representative council in his matric year.

He said the SRC had spoken to the school’s management about the whippings and the incidents “became very minimal”.

“But I was quite vocal against the use of corporal punishment when I was there,” Manana said.

He said he had learned of Seane’s death “with great dismay and shock”.

“We don’t know yet if the death of the pupil can be linked to corporal punishment.

“If it is related to sjambokking, it would be unfortunate. It can’t be that it’s still done because it means that all attempts to convince management have been reversed because we spoke very strongly to them.”

The school has a history of corporal punishment. In 1999 the founder of the school, Simon Mkhatshwa, was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment or a fine of R1000 after being convicted of publicly sjambokking a teacher.

Mkhatshwa has not commented on Seane’s death and refused to allow The Times onto the premises last week.

Mkhatshwa was described by Manana as a “typical traditional man who believed that what must happen at school was teaching and learning and nothing else”.

This week parents threatened to take their children out of the school.

Mabuza said a government delegation would meet Seane’s family in Bloemfontein this week.

Mhaule said the province still viewed attributing the cause of death to corporal punishment as an allegation.

“We want to establish if corporal punishment takes place at the school,” she said.

“We sympathise with the family. Taking your child to another province to study, and for your child to come back as a corpse, is not something the parent was expecting.”

A parent of a Grade 11 pupil said the children were not safe at the school.

“It’s late in the year now but I am definitely not leaving her there next year,” she said.

She said parents were allowed to speak to their children only once a month when they visited the school.

“[Other than that] we are not allowed to speak to them at all, not even on the cellphone after school hours,” the mother said.

She said her daughter had been beaten with a sjambok on one occasion.

Another parent said he was sorry that a pupil had died “but we can’t do anything about it”.

He said he had not spoken to his daughter about the incident because they were not allowed to speak to their children during school hours, or even after school.

Source: timeslive

Witness tells of black man, 25, raping 85-year old

A witness told the Nelspruit Regional Court on Tuesday that she saw the man who attacked and raped her 85-year-old neighbour, a Sapa correspondent reported.

The young woman was testifying in the trial of Mduduzi Sydwell Mnguni, 25, who has pleaded not guilty to raping the 85-year-old and another woman, 49.

Mnguni, from Pienaar Trust outside Mbombela, was arrested by residents and handed to the police on February 11 last year.

On Tuesday, the State revealed that the accused was linked to the rape through DNA evidence. He faced a separate charge for allegedly raping a 49-year-old woman from the same area.

The witness, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, told the court that she first saw Mnguni in the woman’s yard around 8pm on the night of the attack.

“When he saw me and my sister, he hid inside a mealie field. I decided we should alert gogo about him. After she opened the door, I told her she should lock all her doors as there was an intruder outside. After she did, we returned home,” the young woman testified.

She testified that she could not sit back and wait. She then contacted another neighbour and alerted her about the man she saw in her neighbour’s yard.

“I went out of the house to speak to my neighbour at the fence. When I returned to the house, I saw a man jumping out of the gogo’s kitchen window,” she said.

“When he landed outside, he moved and there was a light above him. He turned his head towards me. As he looked straight into my face, I realised it was the accused who is now before court. When he saw me, he moved backwards into the dark wall.”

The woman testified that she screamed for help and other neighbours came.

Police Sergeant Jabulani Sydney Nkosi testified that he decided to take the woman and her neighbours to the police station to open a case.

“On the way, we stopped at the accused’s home to tell his parents. The accused opened a curtain and saw us. After we spoke to his mother, she said he had just arrived and I decided to arrest him at once.”

Magistrate Willie Wilkens postponed the matter to March 12, 2014. – Sapa

Mpumalanga farm murder: One acquitted

The Nelspruit Circuit Court found Aaron Majawodwa Nkosi, 30, guilty on Tuesday of killing white Mpumalanga farmer Johannes Hendrik Tolstoi Schoeman.

A Sapa correspondent reported that Nkosi’s co-accused Thomas Johannes Nyathi, 30, was acquitted.

The two black men were accused of robbing and kidnapping Gudryn Schoeman, 67, and murdering her 86-year-old husband at Vygeboom Farm, near Badplaas, on the night of December 17, 2010.

Judge Mmonoa Teffo said Nkosi incriminated himself during the pointing out of the crime scene, and that his evidence tallied with the testimony of Gudryn Schoeman.

“Nkosi put himself on the crime scene by pointing out the crime scenes,” said Teffo

He had told Captain Martinus Roussou, from the Hawks in Middelburg, that he was at the farm on December 16.

“You said you climbed next to the roof to the top floor of the house and on the first floor, went through a door inside the house.

“You also pointed to the bedroom where Schoeman was found lying on a bed, and attacked him… your accomplice strangled him on his throat until he was unconscious,” said Teffo.

She said Nkosi had shown Roussou how they waited for Gudryn Schoeman to enter the room and how they attacked her before demanding money from her.

“You pointed how Nyathi searched the cupboards, where keys to the couple’s car were fetched and how you left the farm with the wife on the way to Belfast ATM.

“You even pointed the accident scene at the Carolina R33 road, where the Honda Jazz you were travelling in with Schoeman’s wife had the accident.”

Teffo said that, during a trial-within-a-trial, it became clear that Nkosi had not been assaulted to confess to the crime.

“Captain Roussou testified the interpretation was not met with difficulties. Your rights were explained and interpreted. You never even raised to him you were assaulted during the interview and you even signed the rights document.

“If you did raise any complaint to Captain Roussou, he should have asked you to lay charges against those responsible,” said Teffo.

The judge said Nkosi had claimed he was home that night and had no alibi.

“I am satisfied you were involved in the commission of the crime. You are therefore found guilty beyond reasonable doubt on all five counts.”

She said that although the blood samples taken from the car used in the crime, which later crashed into a wall, matched Nyathi’s, the State had failed to prove its case against him.

“Testimony by Pretoria laboratory Warrant Officer Matome Arthur Manyama stated there was error regarding the CAS number. The CAS number on the sample bag was 37122011, instead of 37122010.

“Although Manyama communicated with W/O Orcilla Loubser to rectify the mistake, Loubser herself did not mention it in her testimony,” she said.

“Due to the fact that a proper procedure was not followed by the police

team, there is doubt about contamination.”

Although Nyathi had been unable to explain how his blood came to be on the car’s bumper, she do not accept the DNA results, Teffo said.

“There is no evidence which positively links Nyathi to the crime and he is acquitted of all charges,” she said.

Nkosi will be sentenced on Wednesday. – Sapa

Famous Afrikaans author and scriptwriter attacked near Nelspruit

Chris Barnard (no relation to the heart surgeon) has been attacked at his home near Nelspruit and tied up. He has been injured but apparently not seriously and was treated by paramedics.

The 73-year old writer refused to go to hospital. Mr. Barnard is a famous Afrikaans author who has received the Hertzog Prize twice, in 1973 for his novel Mahala and the short-story collection Duiwel-in-die-bos, as well as for his life’s work in 1991.

His film director wife, Katinka Heyns, was not at home during the attack. The assailants made off with Mr. Barnard’s Isuzu pick-up truck, commonly called a bakkie in South Africa.

According to Sandra Jacobs, the marketing director for the Innibos National Arts Festival in Nelspruit, he was “very traumatised by the incident and did not want to speak to the media”.

A number of Afrikaans authors and intellectuals have been murdered in recent years, including geologist Louw Rabie, brother of the Sestiger Jan Rabie, André Potgieter, Lisbé Smuts-Smith, head of the Afrikaans department at the University of Cape Town, Pieter Pieterse, actor Randall de Jager, among others.

Child rapist’s case postponed 72 times

A convicted child rapist’s case was postponed by the Nelspruit Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday for the 71st time in four years, Mpumalanga police said.

Lt-Col Leonard Hlathi said Andries Mfana Sibiya’s the case was postponed to May 2.

“It was postponed because he claimed he was tired.”

Sibiya, 55, a preacher, raped a 13-year-old girl between 1998 to 2007 and fathered three children with her. He told the court during his trial that God had ordered him to father children so his family could, one day, go to heaven.

He was found guilty on April 2, 2008 on nine charges of rape, and has been in custody since then. During the past four years, sentencing was repeatedly postponed because Sibiya claimed to be ill.

Beeld reported that during his previous court appearance, on March 28, he was pushed into court in a wheelchair, threw himself to the floor and rolled around, eventually coming to a halt in front of the dock.

Hlathi said he had on several occasions started hunger strikes shortly before his court appearances, and then claimed to be too ill to attend court proceedings.

– SAPA