Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Latest murder reopens painful old wounds for Anene’s stepfather
THE discovery of 16- yearold Jodine Pieters’s body has reopened old wounds for Anene Booysen’s stepfather.
Marco Willoughby was unable to attend Anene’s funeral nearly five years ago as he was in jail. Willoughby was taking an afternoon nap when Weekend Argus visited Anene’s home.
“I am not feeling too well,” he said. The neat and quaint home is filled with family photos. An A3 picture frame with a poem dedicated to Anene adorns the wall above the couch.
Willoughby glances at it as he speaks lovingly of his “little girl”.
“No one has ever asked me how I felt about Anene’s death, not even the neighbours. You are the first people to ask me about her,” he said.
“She was a sweet girl. We were very close. I thought of her as my own. My heart ached when I couldn’t be there for her, couldn’t be there for the family during that time but I now take it one day at a time.”
Anene died at Tygerberg Hospital just hours after she was found badly wounded after having been raped and disembowelled in February 2013.
While he was grieving for Anene, Willoughby was dealt yet another blow, his wife, Corlia Olivier, died of cancer a year after losing Anene.
Olivier had fostered Anene after her biological mother died.
“I believe the cancer was made worse by the pain of losing Anene. She loved her little girl.”
Willoughby says he has accepted what happened. “I take it as God’s plan”. But the gruesome discovery about 300 metres from his home has brought pain and unanswered questions.
“I know we can’t always be where our children are and as parents we try to warn them of the dangers out there but these things still happen.
“My heart aches for my child, it aches for the family of the girl who was found now. I know what that family (Pieters) must be going through. It is hard but they must hang in there,” he said.
He said drugs and alcohol abuse in his community were the cause of both his and the Pieters’ family’s grief.
“There are no jobs here because foreigners get all the jobs and that leaves the people here with nothing to do. They abuse alcohol and drugs and that is where the problem is,” he claimed.
Community Policing Forum chairman Renier Louw urged the community to “stop living in silos”.
“It has become a place where it is every man for himself these days,” Louw said.
“Neighbours need to speak out against the wrong they see in their streets and we need to come together as a community,” he said.
He also blames the education system.
“Young people in our community are struggling to cope because they are not catered for in schools. There is a huge emphasis on the academics and less on the practical. This causes many of the young people to drop out of school and engage in drugs.”
asanda.sokanyile@inl.co.za