| 2023/06/06 |
Media Statement
DURBAN – The Kokstad Regional Court has on 31 May 2023, sentenced Lucky Eric Thulani Sipho Khumalo, a 29-year-old self-proclaimed prophet-cum-traditional healer to two terms of life imprisonment after he was found guilty on two counts of rape. Khumalo lured two girls aged 15 and 16 years old to his house after prophesying that someone was bewitching them. The girls went to his house in Bongweni on 11 November 2017 where he instructed one of them to drink a certain concoction while the other girl was taken to the river by his assistant for supposed cleansing. Khumalo remained behind with the other girl and raped her. When the assistant came back from the river, he was again sent back to cleanse the girl that was just raped, opening space for the prophet to continue his raping spree on the other girl. The Kokstad Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit (FCS) pulled out all stops in investigating the matter and when Khumalo realised that the police were hot on his heels, he fled to Gauteng Province. He committed other crimes in Gauteng and later fled to Kwakhiliva in the South Coast where he hid for few days before the police pounced on him. Shrewd investigative work condemned him to prison for the rest of his life. In another incident the Durban Magistrate’s Court sentenced Clayton Mataya, a 29-year-old Zimbabwean national, to life imprisonment following his conviction on a case of repeatedly raping an eight-year-old girl. The child narrated to her mother what their neighbour had been doing to her after the mother instructed her to bath one day. The girl would come home to an empty RDP house in Cato Crest every day after school because both her parents were employed. Clayton manipulated the girl’s situation and used to call her to his house after school and raped her. The mother took her for a medical examination and the doctor’s report confirmed that the child had been sexually violated repeatedly. Soon after the matter was reported to the police, the Brighton Beach Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit hit the ground running in investigating the matter and Mataya was arrested a few days later. The investigating team successfully opposed his several bids for bail and was kept in custody until his sentencing on 2 May 2023.
In Vryheid, the FCS investigators also secured a life imprisonment sentence for a 39-year-old father who was found guilty of raping his 10-year-old biological daughter at Tholakele in KoDlomo on 7 December 2018. The victim was sleeping at her home when the father raped her. When the child visited her aunt in Gauteng province she noticed that the girl was not walking properly and the child opened up about her rape nightmare at the hands of her father. The Vryheid Regional Court sent him to jail for a lifetime on 2 May 2023.
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