Rape survivor slams system
Rape survivor Cheryl Zondi said yesterday she had asked Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane to investigate the South African Police Service (Saps) witness protection programme as her personal experience indicated “the system does not work for victims”.
Zondi added: “When a young person helps clean up a country by getting rapists off the streets, it is then the responsibility of the state to protect that person and protect that person’s rights.
“It is neither just, nor is it constitutional, to ask a youth to drop out of school ... go somewhere far away and forget their identity, all to make cleaning up the country more convenient for the state.”
Zondi, the first witness in the trial of Nigerian televangelist Timothy Omotoso, said this during the announcement of the establishment of her foundation to support women and child survivors of sexual, mental, emotional and spiritual abuse perpetrated in “sacred spaces”.
The 22-year-old University of Johannesburg student from Mpumalanga was put into a witness protection programme and stayed in a safe house at a secret location until she could testify against Omotoso in the Port Elizabeth High Court earlier this year.
She endured tough crossexamination from defence lawyer Peter Daubermann and was slammed by Omotoso’s staunch supporters outside court.
Zondi, who waived her right to anonymity, was put in the spotlight after detailing years of sexual abuse and rape, allegedly at the hands of her pastor, Omotoso, at his mansion in Umhlanga Rocks in Durban, where he allegedly trafficked young women for his sexual pleasure.
Mkhwebane said Zondi’s matter must be investigated urgently, adding that information had emerged that people had offered to pay to have Zondi and other witnesses in the Omotoso rape trial killed.
“I have approached the minister of justice and the minister of police and we were supposed to meet this week so that we can have an urgent intervention because the matter is so serious,” Mkhwebane said. “It’s very urgent, so we are trying our level best to meet at the ministerial level. As Cheryl has said, the system is not protecting the victim.”
Omotoso, the leader of Jesus Dominion International Church, faces 63 charges and 34 alternative counts in the Eastern Cape High Court in Port Elizabeth, including human trafficking, rape, sexual assault and racketeering.
The 58-year-old televangelist allegedly trafficked more than 30 girls and women from various branches of his church to a house in Umhlanga, KwaZulu-Natal, where he allegedly sexually exploited them. Zondi alleged that Omotoso sexually abused her, forced her to perform sexual acts on him and raped her. She said this began when she was 14 and continued until she was 19. – ANA