Child murder and rape trial in South Africa
October 22, 2013
One man arrested on suspicion of raping and murdering two small girls in a Johannesburg slum has confessed. A spokesman for prosecutors said the man, in his late twenties, had appeared in court on two counts of murder, kidnapping and rape respectively.
The man was arrested on Friday (18.10.2013) after two mutilated bodies were discovered in a communal toilet cubicle in the Diepsloot township earlier in the week.
The baby girls, who were cousins, aged two and three years old, had been raped and strangled.
The man was detained after the arrest of four suspected accomplices. They have not confessed. All five, aged between 29 and 47, lived in Diepsloot and will appear in court on Thursday.
Diepsloot residents went on the rampage after the murders, blocking roads with burning tires and pelting police with rocks. Some of the residents gathered outside a police station demanding that a suspect be handed over for vigilante justice.
High murder rate
While the girls' funerals were taking place, reports were coming in of another baby found floating in a nearby stream. A few hours later, police reported that newly-born twins had been found in a bin bag at a refuse dump. One was rushed to hospital, the other was dead.
In another incident at the weekend, the headless body of a 15 year old boy was found in a school yard near Cape Town. The head was later found in the yard of a teenage suspect's house.
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world and official statistics say about 16,000 people are killed every year - on average, that's more than 40 a day.
South Africans Deutsche Welle spoke to were concerned about what was happening in their country.
Nhlanhla Ngobese, a 24 year old university student, told DW correspondent Subry Govender he did not have any children of his own at the moment, but could not see any child of his "grow up in this place with all these murders that are happening and the rapes."
One South African woman pedestrian in Durban DW talked to was shocked.
"It's just too much now. We're just acting like animals," she said.
Criminologist Keresha Chanderpaul told DW South Africans were becoming desensitized to crime in their country.
"If something happens, we just turn a blind eye to it, unless it happens to us - then we get worried. Other than that, if it happens to other people, we don't really care," she said.