Snippets from South Africa, February 2010
Mother and Daughter Brutally Murdered, Daughter Also Raped
In September 2008 an Indian South African woman from Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal province was murdered, and her ten-year-old daughter were raped and then murdered, by two black men. Both men were jailed for life in January 2010, one of them being handed two life terms for murder and rape.[7]
Both men had worked for the woman’s husband, who was out of the country at the time. In their court statements, the men described how they lay in wait for the mother and daughter to return home. The mother was strangled with a scarf. One of the men then raped the ten-year-old girl, after which he hanged the child from the ceiling. Both died from asphyxiation. They were murdered so that they could not identify the men.
No one can possibly imagine either the suffering of the mother and daughter, or later of their family members upon learning of what had happened to them. That men could do such things to a girl of ten is so horrifying that the mind reels from even thinking of it. In these two men we see the depravity of man graphically, hideously manifested. And yet this is not an isolated case in South Africa today, the country with the highest crime rate in the world. Brute beasts are roaming our streets, while innocent people live behind barred doors and windows. The innocent are caged, the wicked walk free. It is good when some are caught and punished, as these two men were (although what a disgrace that SA no longer has the death penalty); but for every one who is apprehended and sentenced, many others get away with their crimes. There are many factors for the massive rise in violent crime (although poverty is not one of them, contrary to what liberal hand-wringers love to claim – the argument that “I’m poor, therefore I rape and murder” is absolute nonsense), but above all others is this: an utter moral collapse in society, brought about largely by the preaching of a false “gospel”, and the diminishing of the preaching of the true Gospel. This is the root cause of the crime wave that is engulfing South Africa. Then comes the ideology of the ruling party, tying the hands of the police and treating criminals with kid gloves.
Young Woman Survives Being Thrown Off a High Bridge
In November 2009 a young Indian South African woman, Kavisha Seevnarain (26), was hijacked by a group of Zulu thugs and tossed off a 60-metre high bridge on the freeway near the town of Umkomaas in the early hours of the morning.
Her four-hour ordeal started at about 10pm on a Friday night when six men hijacked her in her car. She was then held at gunpoint in their car, while her car, handbag, bank cards, and R2000 were all stolen. And when the hijackers parked at a vacant ground they drank alcohol and discussed how they would kill her. Kavisha was then taken to the bridge over the Umkomaas river, and two of the men tossed her over the side. She clung to the metal rails of the bridge and pleaded for her life, but they told her they could not let her live, and repeatedly kicked her hands and fingers until she could no longer hold on. She then plunged from the bridge, falling 60 metres into the river.
Despite having a shattered pelvis and broken ribs, she managed to crawl out of the river and lie, semi-conscious, on the river bank for almost four hours until a passer-by came to her rescue. Her distraught father said, “They treated my child as if she was an inanimate object. They had no respect for human life and deserve the harshest sentence.” He added: “When Kavisha was a little girl and if she got hurt, I used to kiss her on the cheek and reassure her. But after going through such an ordeal, what comfort do I give her? What do I say to her that will make her feel safe gain?”[8] His pain and anguish is what thousands, tens of thousands, of South African fathers are feeling, their children having been victims of violent criminals.
For once, South Africa’s notoriously weak justice system moved swiftly, perhaps partly as a result of the international attention the case received, but also through good police work performed by exceptional policemen (so often the exception rather than the rule these days). Police apprehended the suspects and within a short time two men were sentenced, one receiving a 40-year sentence and the other 25 years. The magistrate, in passing sentence, said, “South Africa is involved in a wave of spiralling crime with terror in the hearts of the community…robbery of this nature is prevalent with women becoming soft targets.”[9] He said the men should be removed from society as they have no respect for humanity.
This shocking criminal act shows the blatant disregard for human life, the sheer callousness of men involved in South Africa’s crime wave – the highest in the world. Every time a woman or girl goes out, her husband or father knows the risk she is taking. There is a complete breakdown of morality, and of law and order, in South African society. Constantly the liberals and the psychologists and the naive tell us that this is somehow a “legacy of apartheid.” What utter nonsense. It has nothing to do with apartheid, many of the thugs roaming the streets were nothing more than babies when apartheid was in force. Some were not even born. The root cause is the sinful heart of men outside of Christ and ignorant of the Gospel. And the present Marxist-dominated ANC government, which before coming to power was a brutal terrorist organisation, knows nothing of real moral standards of even just plain decency. With ex-terrorists in the highest positions of government itself, is it any wonder that violence abounds on the streets?
Black Mob Accuses Child of Being a Vampire, Bays for Blood
In Edendale, Pietermaritzburg, Zulu residents threatened a 12-year-old boy with death, accusing him of being a vampire. Police and community leaders had to rescue him from what would have been horrifying mob justice.
A story had appeared in an Edendale newspaper alleging that a 12-year-old girl from the Eastern Cape province had been accused of vampirism and of eating human flesh. And for some reason, when local residents read the story, they descended on the home, not of the girl but of the boy – a boy who was visiting from the Western Cape province, not the Eastern Cape. The mob, numbering about 3000, demanded that the boy and his family return to the Eastern Cape, even though they were not from there. How exactly a story of an alleged girl vampire from one province came to be associated with a boy from a different province is unknown. But it seems that to the mob baying for the boy’s blood it made no difference. When the police arrived in several vehicles, the mob continued to insult the family, threatening to kill the boy and to burn the house down if they did not leave. The boy’s sobbing mother tried to get answers from the few neighbours who were sympathetic to the family. She said, “All the time they were chanting, hurling insults. I prayed and begged them to spare my child’s life. They would not have it that they are after a wrong person, and I don’t know what they see in my child. Despite these allegations, no one could come forward and say their children have been victims of my child.”[10]
The boy’s aunt said, “This is ridiculous…. What’s worse is that these people could not tell us who spoke to the journalist who wrote the misleading story. I want that journalist to know that she almost killed my sister’s child, and she has left scars that will not be easily healed.”
The boy was taken to a safe place by the police. When community leaders went to the newspaper and asked the reporter to reveal her source, it turned out to be the girl’s own mother! When the mother was confronted, she said her child did not say she eats human flesh and drinks human blood. She said her daughter had told the journalist that she sometimes has bad dreams. In one of her dreams an old woman tells her to remove unborn babies from their mothers’ wombs. The journalist, according to a local councillor, then spiced the story up.[11]
This tragic incident is unfortunately not an isolated case. Throughout South Africa, indeed throughout Africa, black Africans regularly accuse other blacks of witchcraft or of dabbling in other such works of devilish darkness. Of course, witchcraft is rife throughout Africa, and shocking crimes are committed by witches, witchdoctors, and others who practice these dark arts. Witchcraft forms an integral part of the religious beliefs of multiplied millions of black Africans. But because it is so rife, and because witchdoctors often commit murder and mutilate bodies in order to obtain body parts for their rituals, it often happens that innocent people are accused of witchcraft by frightened mobs who then mete out their own form of street “justice”. Such is the fear in which black Africans who believe in witchcraft live their lives.
And yet we are constantly told that all cultures are equal, that all religions are equally valid, that Christian missionaries should not “impose” their religion on others. There is nothing attractive about witchcraft, nothing commendable about a religious belief that so fills people with fear that they threaten to kill a child and burn a house down. And they weren’t even sure of their facts, they picked on a child of the opposite sex and from a different province – not that it would have been right even if they had the correct child. The only answer is for the true Gospel of Christ to be spread amongst the black nations and tribes of Africa, that they may learn of the One who came to destroy the works of the devil and to set His people free from fear, bondage, and sin.
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