What is with all the violence against children?
What is it with us and violence against children and ritual muthi murders?
The brutal ritual killing of four-year-old Bokgabo Poo is an indelible indictment upon the state and all its official apparatuses that every citizen, including young children, is reliant on for safety and protection as stipulated in the nation’s Constitution.
Startling crime statistics reveal that an estimated 350 children were murdered in South Africa during the months of October, November and December 2021.
This year already there has been a handful of reports of gruesome killings involving young children who were sexually abused and later brutally murdered (some of them while they are still alive). Their lifeless bodies were mutilated and the body parts were sold in the dark markets owned by witches and wizards.
The tragic story of Yonela Skweyiya (8) of Mandela Park outside Katlehong in 2011 always stands out as the pinnacle of the inhumane brutality of human-flesh traders in our society.
Giving evidence during the trial of three men and a woman accused of abducting and mutilating the young girl for muthi inside their self-made church, Hawks Special Investigative Unit’s Capt Happy Vilankulu told Magistrate Janise Saulse at the Alberton Court in 2011 that Yonela was cut apart by her killers while she was still alive as her private parts and fingers were sliced off and her left eye gorged-out with a razor blade.
Body parts removed from the little girl were mixed with muthi and buried in different parts inside the shabby corrugated-iron shack church to ensure more people are attracted to Eden Church of Zion in Mandela Park.
Later at the Johannesburg High Court, the four, including the leader of the church, the church’s deacon with his wife, as well as an inyanga from KZN, were all found not guilty of Yonela’s abduction, murder and mutilations. The case against them was dismissed and they were free to go home.
Yonela’s mother’s grief was shattering!
What is scary and troubling in the minds of a recently bereaved grieving Mashiyane family in April this year, was when the girlfriend of the man accused of killing their 6-year-old daughter, Bontle Mashiyane, confessed that she too was also involved in the killings of four other children, including her two young nieces.
Even more morbid details about the murder of the three young children surfaced that convicted killer Collen Hlongwane was not alone in the disappearance of the three toddlers near Hazyview in Mpumalanga.
These are just a few of the hundreds of horrendous murders committed against innocent young children and highlighted by the media this year alone. Many more children in the meantime continue to suffer daily at the hands of paedophiles and violent rapists who often make sure that their victims do not live to give detail of their horrifying ordeal and possibly help identify the perpetrator.
The sad part about the continued murder of young children also traumatises other children who may learn about these gruesome murders from the newspapers as well as on TV and social media. What makes it even more tragic is when the missing child is never traced or the body found.
And as if the orchestrated violence against their innocent young children is not enough, township communities have been placed under siege by armed gangs of criminals who brazenly attack innocent residents with impunity.
Residential homes, businesses and even churches no longer offer the proverbial shelter of safety and security as they have also come under the wave of thuggery and lawlessness that has engulfed communities, leaving many cowering in fear.
In the Free State a well-known medical doctor, who was recently abducted in the presence of his traumatised family, was later found dead. He had been shot several times by his unknown assailants who left his lifeless body lying in the cold of night.
Residents in some parts of Thokoza, Katlehong and Vosloorus complain that they have fearfully become accustomed to the sound of regular gunfire at night in their neighbourhoods.
And the unavailability of police patrols, especially during the night, has aggravated the situation and makes the sickly, the elderly and the frail fear going to bed at night. “What if the stray bullet falls through the roof and hit me, or anyone of the young children inside the house?”
Living has become a dicey gamble and the stakes are our lives.
