rapist – praag.org

Worst serial child rapist may have been caught by accident

The SAPS is investigating at least 100 counts of rape against a Tembisa man. The figure would make the man the country’s worst serial rapist if he is found guilty.

A source familiar with the investigation – who cannot be named as he isn’t authorised to speak to the media – said the 40-year-old was accused of having raped more than 50 schoolgirls between the ages of 6 and 12.

Some of the counts against him include kidnapping and assault.

The accused had been in custody since his arrest on July 11 last year.

His arrest came shortly after he was released from custody on a matter not related to rape.

It is understood police are still investigating more cases, which are said to have linked the man to incidents in other parts of Gauteng.

The accused, who cannot be named before he pleads to the charges, was expected to appear in the Protea Magistrate’s Court on Thursday morning.

The Star understood on Wednesday that the matter would be postponed to next month for further investigations.

Gauteng provincial police spokeswoman Captain Doniah Mothutsane confirmed that the accused was facing rape charges but could not state the exact number.

“(Sometimes, he would) claim that his child lived at a particular house, asking the children for directions or to enter those houses to call the child – (only for the child) to find out that it was just a formulated story that would make him lead the children elsewhere, mostly into the veld,” the source said.

The Tembisa man faces more charges than Mongezi Samuel Jingxela, South Africa’s worst serial rapist.

Jingxela was found guilty and imprisoned in 2010 of having committed 66 rapes within 10 years.

He lured his women victims under the pretext that he would employ them at a factory.

Last year, Sifiso Makhubo, also from Ekurhuleni, was found dead in a Johannesburg Prison cell, hours before he was due to stand trial.

Makhubo was accused of raping 33 girls and two women.

Prosecutors were planning to charge the HIV-positive man with attempted murder – the first time they would have done so in a case in which someone had committed rape knowing his HIV status.

Source: The Star

Burned rape victim dies

A girl, who survived being raped and set alight in January, has died.

The 9-year-old Lihle Hlanjwa suffered extensive burns, gave a statement to the police about two weeks ago in hospital.

She was raped and set alight on January 18, but, after being found in bush along the R300 the next day, managed to tell residents she recognised the man who had raped her and that he had laughed as he set her alight.

Lihle, also known to family and friends as Queenie, died at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital early on Tuesday.

A community representative, Pieter Presence, said Hlanjwa father had virtually lived at the hospital since his daughter was admitted there.

Hlanjwa’s shack had even been vandalised and burgled while he was away, Presence added.

On Tuesday, police spokesman Andre Traut said the 27-year-old suspect, arrested the day after Lihle was attacked, now faced a rape and murder charge, instead of an attempted murder charge.

The suspect, Wanda Oliphant, is expected to appear in the Bellville Magistrate’s Court again next week.

Priscilla Mcentee, chairwoman of Delft Suburban, a community neighbourhood programme, said: “I feel like it’s my own daughter that has passed away.”

Mcentee was instrumental in Oliphant’s arrest. The morning that Lihle was found, she had seen a man, with a burnt T-shirt and blood on his pants, behaving suspiciously.

She called for back-up and together with neighbourhood watch members kept the man in a member’s garage.

The attack on Lihle was one of at least three against children in Delft South in less than a month.

A week before the incident, a 6-year-old girl was raped in a communal toilet in the area.

Three weeks after Lihle was raped and set alight, 11-year-old Siphokuhle Flephu was murdered and allegedly raped.

Two more Cape children raped

Police are hunting for the man who raped an 11-year-old boy in a derelict building in Bonteheuwel.

This horrific attack took place little more than a week after the violent attack on a 9-year-old Delft girl who was raped, doused in petrol and set alight.

In Bonteheuwel, on Sunday at about 7.45pm, the boy was walking along Bonteheuwel Avenue, when a man called him, said police spokesman Captain FC van Wyk.

The man led the boy into a derelict building which had been gutted in a fire. Here, the man, apparently known to the people in the area as “Franky”, raped the boy.

Police have also issued an identikit of a suspect in another Delft child rape which occurred earlier this month – on January 12 a 6-year-old girl was raped in a communal toilet.

Police said the rapist is between the ages of 45 and 50. He is 1.65m tall and has a dark complexion.

Delft police have also issued an identikit of a suspect in a rape that occurred in August last year. In that incident, a 24-year-old woman was forced at knife point into the bushes at the R300 and N2 intersection, and raped.

Reacting to these latest reports of child rape, MEC of Social Development Albert Fritz said that he was “outraged”.