MBOMBELA – A man was sentenced to 15 years for strangling and raping his seven-year-old daughter who suffered from epilepsy. Sunnyboy Phakimpi Mnisi (30) appeared in the Gauteng Circuit of the High Court on Wednesday. He was accused of raping, sodomising and then strangling his daughter Ayanda Nokuvela Khoza on August 16, 2012 in the Nkomazi region.
Defence advocate Mr Nico du Plessis said Mnisi had confessed, stating that on the night in question, his daughter had had an epileptic fit, during which he throttled her and threw her against the wall in his room. When he realised she was dead, he phoned his mother to tell her what he had done.
During his trial, his sister, Ms Prudence Mnisi testified that she had received a call from her mother, asking her to go to her brother’s house and see if the child was alright. Prudence, a member of the CPF in the area, went to the house with other members. She said it was dark and used her cellphone as a torch. “The house was open. I found her in the room with her T-shirt over her head and her school dress covering her lower body.”
Prudence wept on the witness stand, but insisted on carrying on with her testimony when the judge, Mr Eben Jordaan, asked if she needed time to recover.
She told the court that her brother went to the family the following day and confessed to all of them that he had killed Ayanda. “I then phoned my CPF leader and the police, who came to arrest him.”
The next witness was Dr Jan Maree who works at Tonga Hospital.
He testified that the child had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and there were signs of strangulation. He confirmed that she had indeed been raped and sodomised and explained her injuries in detail, adding that it was one of the worst child-assault cases he had ever seen in his entire medical career.
The Judge Mr Eben Jordaan sentenced him to 15 years for the murder and found him guilty on two counts of rape, three years each.
The sentences are to run concurrently. He added that, because it couldn’t be determined if he had raped his daughter prior to or after strangling her, he was imposing a lesser sentence for the rape.
