Courts send message to GBV offenders

WHILE the country marks the first week of 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children, the courts have proved that this conduct would not be tolerated.

In one case, a serial rapist and killer was sentenced to four life imprisonment terms this week as well as an additional 15 years imprisonment.

The Mpumalanga High Court sentenced Philani Justice Nkosi, 35, of Bhuga Trust, on three counts of rape, one of murder and another of robbery with aggravating circumstances.

Nkosi committed these offences from 2014 to 2018 in Bhuga Trust and Halfway Trust, Kabokweni.

He attacked a minor victim while she was on the way to the local shop. He raped and strangled her to death, National Prosecuting Authority Regional spokesperson Monica Nyuswa said.

In another incident, Nkosi, in March 2016, attacked a woman who was also on her way home. She, however, survived her ordeal.

Nkosi continued with his crime spree until December 2018, when he raped an adult woman who was on her way home from work. The matter was reported to the police, and he was subsequently arrested and linked to other crimes through DNA.

Nkosi pleaded not guilty and claimed that the victims were prostitutes and that the minor victim was his girlfriend.

The surviving victims all told the court how their nightmare ordeals have severely impacted their lives.

Director of Public Prosecutions, advocate Nkebe Kanyane, attributed this sentence to the efforts of the justice cluster in maintaining law and order in ensuring that justice prevails for victims of gender-based violence.

In another case heard by the Centane Regional Court in the Eastern Cape, a man who raped an 85-year-old granny was sentenced to an effective 26 years imprisonment.

Lunga Solani, 27, was sentenced to 20 years for rape, three years for housebreaking and three years for theft.

The crimes were committed on the night of July 21 last year in the Mandluntsha area in the district of Centane, said Luxolo Tyali, NPA Regional Spokesperson for the Eastern Cape Division.

The granny testified that she was preparing to go to bed when she went to the kitchen to switch off the lights. It was then that somebody kicked her door open and got inside. The assailant pushed her to her bedroom, where he raped her after severely assaulting her. The elderly woman fought back. In this case, too, NPA is of the view that the sentence serves as the desired deterrent to would-be perpetrators.

Meanwhile, Thamsanqa Somfaka, 35, who was earlier convicted of killing his pregnant girlfriend and mother of his two children, Samantha Zungu, is awaiting sentencing at the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, sitting in Palm Ridge.

On 13 August last year, Somfaka assaulted his heavily pregnant girlfriend with a stove poker.

It is said he had demanded she give him R500 from the children’s social grant money. When she refused, he assaulted and killed her. He then told his neighbour, as well as Zungu’s mother, police and nurses, he found her in bed in a pool of blood.

In earlier convicting him, Judge Tshifhiwa Maumela described Somfaka as a “dangerous man to society”.