Travelling solo for anyone is a potentially dangerous endeavour – more so if you’re a woman, unfortunately.
About 3 000 women in South Africa were murdered in 2018 – or one every three hours – which is more than five times higher than the global average, according to the World Health Organization.
On October 6, a young woman gave herself over to Witbank SAPS for allegedly having committed a murder in Jellicoe Street, near Eskom Park.
“The woman handed herself over after she heard that a corpse had been found in Jellicoe Street; before this point in time she had allegedly not been certain that she had killed the man,” Captain Eddie Hall, spokesperson of Witbank SAPS, explained.
The woman alleges that on October 5 she had been “pub crawling” (going from one bar to the next) when, at some point, she realised that she was being followed from bar to bar.
The woman left her final “pub crawling” destination and headed down Jellicoe Street, where she allegedly noticed that the strange man, who had been following her earlier, was still trying to follow her.
“The woman explained in her statement that she decided to walk through the field next to the bridge at Eskom Park in Jellicoe Street, but the man continued to follow her. The woman realised that the man was armed with a metal pipe, and started suspecting the worst. The woman says that the man then charged her and attempted to lift her dress,” Capt Eddie Hall explained, “in the skirmish, the woman explained that she noticed an empty beer bottle on the floor. She said that she picked it up and broke it, hoping to use it as a weapon. At this point the woman told us that she stabbed the man multiple times with the beer bottle, and ran away leaving him in the field. The police came across his body later that evening.”
The woman made her first appearance in Witbank Magistrate’s Court on October 7, however her bail application was postponed.
“The courts will have to decide whether they continue with prosecution; and if they do, whether they’ll prosecute her for murder or simply manslaughter,” concluded Capt
