Call to deny bail for alleged hammer killer
THE SA National Civic Organisation (Sanco) has asked that no bail be given to 24-year-old Khanyile Ramba, who is accused of killing his 24-year-old girlfriend, Sinathi Magqazana, from the Marikana informal settlement in Zwelihle, near Hermanus.
Magqazana was bludgeoned to death with a hammer and her body stuffed in a refuse bag on Saturday. The accused Ramba later handed himself to the police.
Magqazana’s death brought to four the number of women killed in the Western Cape alone in the last month.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila said Ramba appeared at the Hermanus Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.
“He is charged with the murder of Magqazana and malicious damage to property,” said Ntabazalila.
The case was postponed until today.
Sanco national spokesperson Simon Skhosana said that gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide had reached alarming and unacceptable levels that were beyond those of a national pandemic.
Skhosana said that special courts needed to be set up speedily to deal with atrocious GBV and femicide crimes.
He said the unrelenting patriarchal war waged against women and daughters by insecure and abusive men demanded for an extraordinary response to send an unequivocal message that there was no place in society “for heartless monsters who think that women deserved to be treated with disdain and brutality”.
He said Sanco’s view was that the society must revisit how boys were raised and socialised because children raised in abusive environments tend to be worse abusers.