Alex Gobela’s rape victim gives testimony, objects to robust questioning by defence lawyer
The victim was put through the wringer by the defence attorney, asking why he was questioning her so robustly, but was told by the magistrate that it was the nature of the beast in the court room in order to reach the truth.
A 15-year-old girl who was allegedly raped multiple times by her Gobela, a Sangoma initiation master, broke down and cried as she objected to robust questioning in the Alexandra Regional Court from the defence lawyer, advocate Zimisele Masuku.
The victim was 11 years old when the rape incidents took place and her Gobela, Arthur Lucky Motaung, also known as Dr Lucky, has pleaded not guilty to 12 counts including six of rape, one of compelled rape, three of assault to commit grievous bodily harm using a sjambok, and two of common assault.
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Under intense cross-examination from Masuku, the witness asked why she was being subjected to such robust questioning as this was traumatising for her, but magistrate Hanillie Banks explained to her that the defence lawyer wanted to establish the truth as per the oath the victim had taken upon ascending to the witness stand.
Banks said the lawyer was trying to establish the truth, in instances where there were some ambiguities in the statements she might have made. “This is the nature of the beast in a court of law as you get to be grilled in pursuit of nothing but the truth,” the magistrate said.
Masuku asked the witness why she refused to go home with her parents when they came to fetch her. “The Gobela had given me strict orders to refuse to go home with my parents as this would jeopardise my initiation process,” the witness said.
“But you could have defied him and gone back home with your parents, isn’t it?” Masuku asked. To which the witness replied, “I could not defy him as he had threatened to beat me up with a sjambok he had in his hand.”
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“But you could have told your parents about the threats made as well,” Masuku added. The witness replied that it would not have been easy to tell her parents as the accused would not give her space to talk to her parents alone.
“There was no privacy at all for me to talk to them alone. When they eventually left I could see my mother was not happy that I was remaining behind but there was nothing she could do as I had stressed that I was not going home with them,” the witness added.
Asked how the accused would invite her to endumbeni, the ancestral hut, in the presence of his wife, the witness said, traditionally, the accused’s wife was not allowed in endumbeni when she was menstruating and this was when he would invite the witness to the hut.
Once in the hut, the witness said the accused would show her videos of himself and his wife having sex, and when ‘I questioned why he was showing me all this, he would say because he wants me to do the same with him’.
“I told him that I could not fall in love with him nor perform sexual acts with him as he was older than me, and I regarded him as a parent to me as well. He then proceeded to rape me and warned me not to tell anyone or he would burn down our home and kill all members of my family,” she said.
After this, the witness started crying and screaming hysterically to which the magistrate then ordered an adjournment to November 28 with the accused remanded in custody.
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