‘They deserve to rot in jail’
Coffin torture of Middelburg man drives his mom to state of collapse, sets social media alight
ON August 17 Victor Rethabile Mlotshwa set off for Middelburg to buy supplies for the family spaza shop.
His mother had given him R2 000 to stock up on goods to sell to the community of Big House.
Big House is anything but a mansion: it’s an informal settlement of about 50 houses patched together with zinc and clay in the shadow of Komati power station.
Life here is tough at the best of times. Mlotshwa, 28, does not have a job and the family relies on the spaza shop to survive.
Instead of returning home with the goods, Mlotshwa arrived home beaten up and penniless. He had been attacked by two white men who accused him of trespassing on a nearby farm.
A video clip of the cruelty Mlotshwa suffered has gone viral on social media. His two attackers can be seen forcing him into a coffin and trying to close the lid.
Mlotshwa is heard screaming in terror during the assault.
But even though he was deeply traumatised by the attack, it was his mother Mlotshwa thought of first. Afraid of the effect the full story would have on an elderly woman who suffers from high blood pressure, he underplayed the incident.
This week Lonea Mlotshwa collapsed outside the Middelburg Magistrate’s Court during the bail hearing of Willem Oosthuizen and Theo Martins, the two men accused of terrorising her son.
Speaking to the Sunday Times from her hospital bed at Middelburg Hospital, she said she thanked God for saving Mlotshwa. If he had not survived the attack, she “wouldn’t have known where my son died”, she said.
“That day I sent him to town to buy more stock. He was on his way to hitchhike at the main road.”
She almost collapsed when she saw the video clip for the first time on her neighbour’s Facebook page. “I was very shocked when I saw what they POWER LINES: Victor Rethabile Mlotshwa lives in the informal settlement known as Big House in the shadow of Komati power station in Middelburg, Mpumalanga. His family survives by running a spaza shop. He had been sent to collect supplies for it when he was attacked
They are cruel, they are hooligans that deserve to rot in jail
TEARS AND FEARS: Victor Mlotshwa is forced into a coffin, left. In the centre, his mother, Lonea Mlotshwa, cries next to her son in the Middelburg Magistrate’s Court, ahead of the appearance of, at right, Theo Martins and Willem Oosthuizen. The two abandoned a bail application, judging a jail cell a safer option were doing to him. He never told me the coffin part and that he was held at gunpoint.
“Hearing him scream for help in the video really affected me emotionally. They are cruel, they are hooligans that deserve to rot in jail,” she said.
“He ended up not going to town because he lost all of the cash there. He came back beaten up and he told me he was not sure if they took the money or it fell when they were beating him up,” she said.
When her two granddaughters, aged 11 and 13, arrived at the hospital they could not hold back their tears when they saw their grandmother in a hospital gown. “Please don’t cry, I’m fine. I will be discharged soon,” she said, giving them a cloth to dry their tears.
The two were being cared for by a neighbour while Gogo Mlotshwa was in hospital.
At the time of the attack, Martins worked as a foreman at JM De Beer Boerdery about 2km from Big House.
Oosthuizen and Martins abandoned their bail application after their legal counsel cited security concerns if they were to be released.
The courtroom was packed with supporters from the ANC, DA and EFF.
When it became clear the two would not be released on bail, ANC Youth League deputy president Desmond Moela told supporters: “It is a pity. We wanted them to come out so that we can fight with them. Racism must fall, and we will drive all racist white people to the sea.”
EFF national spokesman Mbuyiseni Ndlozi slammed the police for being slow to arrest the two.
“It was only when we put a national spotlight on this matter that the police acted,” he said.
As outrage about the assault grew, other victims of alleged assault by the two white men came forward with their tales.
Another Big House resident, Delton Sithole, said he had just finished a night shift at a nearby mine on the day Mlotshwa was attacked when he, too, was cornered by the two accused.
He had used the footpath almost every day since 2014 to cut across to the mine. “I never had any problems there,” he said.
When he fought back, the two called him the K-word and asked how he “dare challenge a white man”, he said.
“I managed to fight back against one of them when he started pushing me around, but he ran to his bakkie and pulled out a gun. I ran and they chased and bumped me using the bakkie. Then they threw me in the back of the bakkie. This was when they saw Victor crossing and they released me and chased Victor,” Sithole said.
Another resident said of the pair: “They once made an old man that stays here strip naked and they were laughing at him. He came back and informed the community, but nothing could be done about that.” — Additional Reporting by Jan Bornman
It was only when we put a spotlight on this matter that the police acted