‘Worst serial rapist’ in SA awaits sentencing
Monster needs to be removed from society, court told
LONWABO SOLONTSI is one of the country’s worst serial rapists in recorded history and a dangerous, persistent, and premeditated psychopathic predator, it was argued in the Grahamstown High Court yesterday.
Solontsi, 29, was convicted last year of 39 rapes committed over five years. He also pleaded guilty to a further 26 charges including robbery with aggravating circumstances and housebreaking with intent to rob and rape.
Solontsi is also serving time for two other rapes, bringing the grand total of rapes committed over five years to 41.
Senior state advocate Nickie Turner yesterday said a psychiatric panel had found Solontsi to be a pervasive and non-remedial psychopath with a high risk of violent reoffending behaviour.
“The risk will not diminish with time and [Solontsi] will continue to present a persistent danger to others and the community at large,” she said in written argument submitted to the court.
But, while his lawyer Helen McCallum agreed that his serial crimes were extremely serious, she set out a personal history which showed him to have an exceptional academic intellect and an emotionally confusing past.
It seemed Solontsi grew up largely in the Willowvale area with a grandmother. He had sometimes changed schools to be with his father when he found work in other areas. He did not know his mother as a child and this caused him some confusion and heartbreak.
He met and spent time with his mother for the first time in Grade 11, when he stayed with her in the Western Cape for his December holiday. She came to visit him at school in his first month in matric.
One day he was called to the school office and told to meet his mother in the car park. There he found his mother dead in her car. It was not explained in court how she had died but McCallum said this had been a huge shock to him.
The incident did not affect his matric results and he passed brilliantly in 2009. McCallum handed up his academic transcript from Fort Hare where he had, for two years, studied towards a BSc.
Again, despite falling alcohol and substance abuse, his academic results were excellent.
Solontsi left Fort Hare in July of his final year as he believed police suspected him of at least one of the several rapes he perpetrated on the Alice campus.
He viciously raped and robbed dozens of women and teenagers during his crime spree between 2010 and 2015.
Turner said Judge Thamie Beshe might wish to sentence Solontsi as a dangerous criminal. In such cases, he is sentenced to imprisonment for an “indefinite period”.
At some point, the court should then reconsider his sentence.
The law required that this period be dictated by the sentence he would ordinarily have been given for his crimes.
In this case, Turner said this should be at least 25 years. It is only after 25 years that someone serving a life sentence can be considered for parole. She suggested that in the normal course, he should be looking at 18 life terms and a further 319 years for the remaining 21 rapes. He faced another 210 years imprisonment for 14 counts of robbery with aggravating circumstances, 56 years for seven counts of robbery and 35 years for seven counts of housebreaking.
Solontsi handed in an impassioned and articulate letter to court in which he begs his victims for forgiveness. He blames his actions on his “life circumstances” which he says destroyed the noble, humble person he had been, instead leaving behind an “animal”.
But Turner rejected the letter. She said he was the most prolific serial rapist in South Africa.
“He is an extremely dangerous man and every woman in South Africa is unsafe while he is outside prison. He is a manipulative monster who needs to be removed from society permanently.”
Beshe postponed judgment on sentence to Friday.