Burglar with panga hacks granny in eMbalenhle

Scores of stitches hold close the many deep gashes on Johanah Shabangu’s ageing hands.

A man wearing a balaclava invaded this 67-year-old pensioner’s home in eMbalenhle and attacked her with a panga early in the morning of October 26.

Shagangu and her 14-year-old grandson were asleep when the intruder accessed the house. The sound of things falling awoke Shabangu, and she stood up to investigate.

“The man had a panga in his hand. When he realised I had already seen him, he came at me with the panga. I tried to block the panga blows with my hands,” explained a traumatised Shabangu.

“The attacker wanted to hit my head with the panga to kill me.”

Shabangu cried to her grandchild to escape through a window.

“I didn’t want both of us to die; at least he must survive.”

The grandmother screamed for help until her tenant woke up and came to her rescue.

“When the tenant came, the criminal ran away. The tenant called my daughter, who rushed me to the clinic. I was then transferred to the Evander Hospital,” Shabangu relayed the events of that morning.

“My mother needs to go Witbank Hospital for operations on both her injured hands. The doctor told us her hands might never again work properly because of the injuries she sustained,” Delisile Mathaila told the Ridge Times.

The police’s handling of this case has been like rubbing salt into the wounds on Shabangu’s tattered hands. She has lost faith in the eMbalenhle SAPS.

According to Mathaila, the police knew of the attack on her mother, but no one went to the Evander Hospital to speak to the pensioner.

Mathaila said that after the hospital discharged her two days later, they went straight to the eMbalenhle Police Station to open a case. The officer who took their statements allegedly told them not to touch anything in the house until the SAPS arrived.

“We did as instructed, but they never visited the crime scene or to see damages caused. No one asked my son what he saw either,” Mathaila said last week.

The victim and her daughter were stunned when they received a message that a simple case of assault was opened.

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“This was breaking and entering and attempted murder. The man, armed with a panga, deliberately broke open the gate, broke open the door of the house to enter and attacked and badly wounded my mother and nearly killed her and my son. How is this a mere case of assault?” an angry Mathaila stated.

Fanning their belief that the police had failed this pensioner was a follow-up SMS stating the case was closed because of no leads.

“I wonder how they would feel if it was one of their parents who nearly died at the hands of a criminal and other police do what they are doing to us,” said Mathaila.

The Ridge Times asked the SAPS for comment on November 12. Mathaila informed the newspaper that the police finally arrived at her mother’s house on November 14.

Busi Mthethwa, the spokesperson for the eMbalenhle SAPS, confirmed on November 15 that the police had visited the crime scene and opened a case of assault with the intent of causing grievous bodily harm.

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