Publications
Partners
An eight-year-old girl from Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape has had to change schools twice and leave her village to live in a different province to escape the man who allegedly raped her two years ago.
By contrast, the 57-year-old alleged perpetrator, a subject adviser for the department of education, is said to be living a carefree life in the same village where he is accused of luring the little girl into his house before sexually assaulting her.
The man is currently out on bail, pending his trial for the rape, which so shocked the nation in 2019 that President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the victim and her family at their home in Ngobozane village near Lusikisiki to comfort them.
However, the child’s great-grandmother says she has lost all hope in the justice system and her despair is aggravated by having to face the alleged rapist in the village every day.
The 72-year-old woman says it pains her to see the man enjoying himself as if nothing has happened, drinking, hosting parties and telling people that he has won the case, while her great-granddaughter’s life has been ruined forever.
“I saw him [the alleged rapist] last week, as he’s now back here in the community after getting bail. He lives around here, so there’s no way to avoid seeing him. He acts as if he’s done nothing wrong and is living like a king.
“My grandchild, on the other hand, had to be [taken out of] her previous school because her friends were continuously asking her about the incident. We moved her to another school that is also here in Lusikisiki, but when we realised she wasn’t coping earlier this year, we moved her again to the Western Cape to live with relatives, far away from this place that keeps reminding her of what she went through,” she says, adding that the young girl is still traumatised, often has bad dreams and wakes up in the middle of the night crying.
The great-grandmother says she herself lives in fear of being raped, as many other women and children have been in the area.
City Press reported in 2019 that on the same day University of Cape Town student Uyinene Mrwetyana – who had been sexually assaulted and murdered – was buried in East London, the then six-year-old girl was allegedly raped in Lusikiki.
READ: ANC women’s league calls for harsh punishment against abusers
The child had been on her way to buy chips at a shop when the man allegedly asked her to come to his house and then raped her, after which she managed to escape and reported the incident to her great-grandmother.
This week, several other women in Lusikisiki told City Press that they, too, lived in fear because of the high prevalence of rape in the small town.
Last week, Police Minister Bheki Cele, while releasing crime statistics for the period from January to March this year, revealed that Lusikisiki was the rape capital of the country.
“The Eastern Cape’s Lusikisiki Police Station recorded the most incidents of rape, overtaking the Inanda Police Station [in KwaZulu-Natal], which had previously had the highest number of cases for some years,” said Cele.
Statistics further revealed that rape cases in Lusikisiki doubled from the previous year’s reporting cycle from 44 to 84. The same is true of other sexual offences in the town, which increased from 46 to 88 – making Lusikisiki the country’s capital of those crimes as well.
Eastern Cape police provincial commissioner Brigadier Liziwe Ntshinga and Safety and Liaison MEC Weziwe Tikana-Gxothiwe are expected to release the province’s detailed crime statistics next week.
Zandile Huluhulu-Mdali, centre manager of Lusikiki’s NGO Hombe White Door Centre of Hope, which deals with victims of rape, other sexual offences and gender-based violence, says the facility is under-resourced, but she and her staff are doing all they can to cope.
One of the concerns she raised is that when victims report cases to the police station, they are often told there are no vans that can be used to investigate complaints.
“It’s sad what people are subjected to here in Lusikisiki. When a police van finally becomes available, hours or even a day after the incident has been reported, we have a situation where police put the alleged perpetrator in the back of the bakkie and the victim in the front seat of the same vehicle. Is that not another form of abuse? And what if there’s no space in the front – will they put both the suspect and the victim in the back?” she asks.
Huluhulu-Mdali cites a recent incident in nearby Hombe village in which a young woman was raped and then burnt to death. She adds that the White Door centre worked with at least 10 rape victims between January and March this year alone.
Village elder Mfulelwa Simbosini (86) says some rape cases remain unresolved because the victims cannot identify their attackers as their faces were covered.
He believes alcohol abuse is one of the factors driving men to rape.
READ: Cele again cites alcohol as a driving force behind serious crime
“Even when people are arrested, they just appear in court on one or two occasions and then they’re out and back in the community,” he says.
Huluhulu-Mdali says that in Malizole village, also near Lusikisiki, a girl was allegedly raped at the age of six by her mother’s boyfriend. When she was 17, the same girl was raped again near a tavern on her way home from school.
“We took her into the centre. She’s one of our members who participates in victims’ empowerment programmes. Here, they’re taught to sew and undertake other activities to keep themselves busy. They learn new skills in order to make a living and be self-supporting,” she says.
Eastern Cape provincial police spokesperson Brigadier Tembinkosi Kinana says it is not easy to identify exactly what is behind this pandemic of rape and violence against women and girls.
“Our observations and reports indicate that most of these crimes are happening behind closed doors.
“In some instances, they happen at night when young children are made to travel long distances alone, or elderly women are left to fend for themselves in the isolation of their homes without proper guardians.
“This poses serious challenges for police investigations, as some of the suspects manage to hide their identities and disappear without a trace,” he says, adding that preventing rape will remain a priority of the police.
He says the Lusikisiki Police Station services a number of rural and administrative areas, some of them mountainous.
This poses challenges to police officers, as the roads are often impassable and other areas cannot be reached by car. In addition, some homesteads are located far apart from one another.
“Nevertheless, the police are doing their best to ensure that people receive their services, regardless of the inhibiting circumstances.”
Kinana says awareness campaigns have been conducted in various schools and villages in Lusikisiki to educate school children and the elderly about gender-based violence, domestic violence and sexual crimes.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
