Pretoria - Gender-based violence activists, EFF members and journalists struggled to contain their emotions in court and cried when a heartbroken mother begged the Pretoria North Magistrate’s Court not to grant bail to her brother, 27, who allegedly raped her two-year-old daughter.
During cross-examination the mother told the court that her daughter’s health was regressing.
Her vaginal walls were hurt so badly that a layer of fat could be seen. With tears flowing down her face, she said the ARVs the child was taking were too strong for her and had since changed her skin from very light to very dark.
The mother said she caught the accused red-handed after she heard her daughter screaming loudly on the evening of September 24. She had visited her family home in Soshanguve to clean the house for their mother who was ill and due to return from hospital.
She told the court that it was dark in the house because of load shedding. While she was doing dishes, the accused allegedly took her daughter to another room, where he allegedly picked her up and penetrated her.
She said when she ran to the room the accused dropped her daughter, who screamed.
The women in court hugged each other and cried together when the mother told the magistrate that she had complained about the accused to their mother because he used to suck her breasts and put his tongue inside her mouth. On one occasion the child complained that he put his finger inside her nappy.
The mother’s relationship with her own mother has collapsed because she reported the matter to the police and got her brother arrested instead of letting the family “solve the matter”.
Her story was supported in an affidavit by her grandmother who corroborated her claim that she was abused and made to work like a slave by her own mother from childhood.
She said the accused was a problem child and a drug addict who was spoiled by their mother. He did everything knowing that their mother, a nurse at Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital, would do everything in her power to get him out of trouble.
“When I caught him I asked him ‘why do you hate me so much? Why did you do this to my child? Did you think I would not find out’? He said ‘I do not care’,” the crying mother said.
She has since relocated to a safer location, undisclosed to their relatives who support the accused, but she still believed that the accused could find her if he was released on bail.
Asked why she went to her family home if she did not (feel) safe or trust her brother, she replied: “My mother has controlling behaviour. She cut me off the rest of the family at one point because they were critical of her treatment of me.
“I was afraid of her. I am afraid of my mother. I know my mother and how she raised me. When she called me I would go.
“I have tried to cut myself off from my family but sometimes it was hard. I respected and obeyed my mother. With this case it went away. When my child was raped it all went away. That respect and fear is gone.”
The accused opted not to put himself through a similar cross-examination. Prosecutor Tumelo Letaoana told the court that this should be considered because if he really was innocent as he claimed he would have also subjected himself to cross-examination the hurting mother was brave enough to endure.
Leader of the EFF in Tshwane, Obakeng Ramabodu, and Ward 36 branch secretary in Soshanguve Block WW Dorothy Singo said the party would support the mother even against those members of her family who may have turned their backs on her. He said gender-based violence perpetrators needed to be dealt with.
Judgment on the bail application will be delivered tomorrow morning.
Pretoria News