RAPIST HEALER JAILED

You are bewitched and need healing

A TRADITIONAL healer who stuffed herbs into the genitals of two teenage girls before raping them was yesterday sentenced to a combined 14 years’ imprisonment.

Lucky Gumbi, 35, was sentenced to six years ’ imprisonment on the first count of rape and to eight years on the second count.

Gumbi appeared in the Mmabatho Regional Court yesterday.

Originally from KwaZulu-Natal, Gumbi was based at Ramatlabama village in Mahikeng, North West Province where he was practising as a traditional healer.

Gumbi apparently convinced the girls ’ parents, who are also cousins, that they were bewitched and needed his traditional medicine to heal them.

The parents then allowed him to take the girls to his home, where he kept them for two weeks.

In December 2013, Gumbi was called to Lotlhakane village to heal a bedridden woman.

While he was there, he saw the two girls, both aged 17 at the time, and told them he had a prophecy that they were bewitched and needed healing.

Gumbi told the parents of one girl that she had crocodile fat under her skin and told the second girl ’ s parents that people wanted to bewitch her using her school bag.

The girls testified that Gumbi called them one by one and ordered them to lie on the ground.

He then tied them up with colourful cloth, applied herbs to their genitals and raped them.

Gumbi told the girls not to tell anyone as the ancestors would be angry and they (the girls) might die.

The rapes happened on December 12 2013 and January 6 2014. One of the victims reported the ordeal to her mother who alerted the police.

Magistrate Ntshadi Leshomo said Gumbi would no longer be allowed to work with children and that his licence to practise as a traditional healer would be revoked.

“What you did was a serious offence and you must be removed from the society,” Leshomo said.

Meanwhile, the case of another traditional healer, Keorapetse Meloreng, was postponed by the same court yesterday.

Meloreng allegedly stabbed his girlfriend with a spear while he was hallucinating at their home in Lonely Park village in February last year.