POLOKO TAU
A21-year-old woman was left for dead after possibly being raped in Dube on the first day of Women’s Month.
Soweto police are investigating a possible rape case after Mpho* was found yesterday morning, lying half-naked and having been brutally assaulted at a vacant stand.
Mpho’s sister Tshepang* said she received a call just before 7am informing her that her sister had been found injured. She said she arrived at the scene to the gruesome sight of her sister lying motionless and badly injured.
“I looked at her half-naked body with her trousers and panties a distance away and I thought she was dead. She had blood-curdling wounds all over her face and thighs which showed that she had been battered, hit with bricks and stabbed with broken bottles,” said Tshepang.
“Whoever did this to her left her for dead. With the kind of injuries she sustained, she is lucky to have survived, especially after having been out there in the cold during the night, and the ambulance having arrived two hours after it was called.”
Tshepang said Mpho was living with her boyfriend in Dube. “Her friend said they went out drinking on Sunday and she walked her home at about 11pm. Her boyfriend said she came home around that time, but he went out to buy cigarettes and found her missing when he came back,” she said.
“She may have been a disorderly child but she did not deserve this. I don’t know what this is going to do to our sickly mother back home in KwaZulu-Natal, who has always been worried about her.”
At the scene – a walled-in vacant stand at the corner of Mehlomakhulu and Godfrey streets – a trail of blood could still be seen yesterday from the corner all the way into the yard and down to a heap of rubble where the victim was found.
Several bloodstained bricks could be seen among the rubble. Neighbours, who wished not to be named, said they heard no screams during the night which could have alerted them to an attack.
Tshepang said she had wanted her younger sister to train as a paramedic “before she became disorderly and mixing with the wrong crowd. I believe people who did this are known to her and wanted her dead so that she won’t be able to identify them. Isn’t it cruel enough raping a woman that they still went on and battered and stabbed her over and over again like this? Only cold-hearted people could do this, and I pray that police find them soon so that they can pay dearly for their evil deeds.”
Mpho was in hospital last night.
“Her whole face was swollen, and among her injuries she had some teeth missing. She had been struggling to talk and did not make any sense when she uttered a few words,” said Tshepang.
Police said only a case of assault had been officially opened but they could not rule out the possibility that the victim could also have been raped.
“The complainant was unable to talk, so we couldn’t take any statement from her. We will await her to recover and take a statement or wait for the doctors to determine whether she had been raped before a formal rape case can be opened,” said police spokeswoman Captain Nomvula Mbense.
Mpho was found just a day after the Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Lulu Xingwana, officially launched Women’s Month.
“Since gender-based violence remains the main scourge affecting women, we are working with the National Prosecuting Authority, the SA Police Service and the Department of Social Development to focus on this matter during Women’s Month,” Xingwana said at the launch on Sunday.
* Not their real names.