Timber tycoon sex-slave rapist jailed for life terms
A WEALTHY White River businessman who held five underage Mozambican girls captive as sex slaves for three years has been sentenced to eight life terms for human trafficking and rape.
Mpumalanga timber entrepreneur Lloyd Mabuza, 62, and his accomplice, Violet Chauke, 24, were convicted on multiple counts of human trafficking.
Mabuza, who had been out on bail of R70 000 until this week, was also found guilty on multiple counts of raping the girls, who were aged between 10 and 16.
The pair were convicted and sentenced by magistrate Andre Lambrecht in the Graskop Circuit Court on Friday.
After her conviction, Chauke, a Mozambican, was handed over to home affairs officials for deportation to Mozambique.
She received a sentence of 20 years, suspended for five years.
Both had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The heavy sentence is the culmination of a two-year trial that brought to light the trafficking of Mozambican children to South Africa for sexual exploitation.
South Africa’s Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act makes provision for a maximum penalty of life impris- onment, a R100-million fine, or both.
Lambrecht noted that he had taken into account that Chauke herself had been a victim of human trafficking. She was brought to South Africa under false pretences by her elder sister, Juliet Chauke, and raped by Mabuza when she was 12.
In his summary, Lambrecht said the sentence sent a strong message that “trafficking, a new name for slavery, will no longer be tol-
Girls were found half-starved and unkempt, living in appalling conditions
erated by the courts in South Africa, or internationally”.
Prosecutor Isabet Erwee told the court that the girls had been trafficked for sexual purposes from Mozambique to South Africa in 2009, and held captive in a remote Rhenosterhoek compound near Sabie, Mpumalanga.
The compound where the girls were held was described as a lumberjack village, located on property owned by York Timbers.
“The village is in a very remote spot, with only one or two trout farms nearby. A stranger would find it difficult to get to it without help,” Lambrecht said.
Mabuza, who owned a large house nearby, would have either Juliet or Violet fetch one of the children for him at night.
The girls testified in camera that when they told Violet about what had happened, she would tell them that they would get used to it.
In his testimony, Mabuza said he was subcontracted to do work for York Timbers, and was not responsible for the compound where the girls were held captive.
The girls were rescued in 2012. The wife of one of Mabuza’s employees had taken one of the girls into her home, and sent her to school.
When the school’s principal and a social worker found out about the girls at the compound, they alerted police.
The girls were found halfstarved and unkempt, living in appalling conditions, according to a police report. Juliet fled to Mozambique. Johan Bosch, a former operations manager at Child Welfare South Africa in the White River, Sabie and Graskop district, said: “Although the harsh sentence will never take away the trauma the girls went through, I am extremely happy that the justice system is taking a stance against the scourge of child trafficking in South Africa. Justice has prevailed.”