WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-04-21 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
By Lesego Masemola
Almost four years after her rape, Selina Mabandla’s (not her real name) attackers have finally been imprisoned.
In the past four years, the case was postponed 38 times, but on Friday the Pretoria high court sentenced Steve Methanol, 24, to 20 years in jail and Nathaniel Nonyane, 38, to life imprisonment.
“I am still ashamed of what happened to me. But I am healing. I have been waiting for so long for this day. I do not know how to thank my lawyer and the policewoman who helped me. It’s been a long road,” she said.
| ‘I am still ashamed of what happened to me. But I am healing’ |
Constable Hazel Richards took over the case in 2004 after the case had been postponed several times because the DNA tests had been botched.
On Friday, Richards said: “For the first time since I met her I could see a smile and some sign of relief after the sentencing.
“She was always depressed. The continuous postponement of the case was taking its toll on her. I could see it in her eyes.”
She said she felt she owed it to Mabandla, a mother of three children, to continue with the case until it was concluded because she realised how badly it was affecting her.
“When I heard the judge’s sentence, I was relieved. I was proud that I had not let her or myself down, that I had done a good job despite all the postponements. I was doing it for all other women who have been in her shoes, whose perpetrators were not convicted,” she said.
| ‘I was proud that I had not let her or myself down’ |
“I had to fight off many bail applications made by the suspects because I had to protect her. In one of the court appearances, the suspects told her that they would come back to kill her and her family and I could see that it frightened her so much that she lost weight as a result of stress. I had to fight,” she said.
Mabandla was living in fear and shame and still had not told her family about the rape.
On Friday, she said she had enjoyed her first unbroken sleep since the rape.
On May 1 2004, Mabandla was walking down Rossouw Street in Pretoria east just after 7pm after visiting her sister.
“The one moment there was no one following me. When I took a second look, there they were walking behind me. My heart skipped a beat, I thought of running, but I asked myself what would I be running from,” she said.
She said the men caught up with her and started harassing her.
They pulled her jacket over her head and shoved a screwdriver into her back, instructing her not to resist.
They then forced her across the street to a dark and bushy area, where they took turns raping her.
“The one raped me three times and the other two times,” she said.
The men then asked her for money, and when she told them she did not have any, they threatened to take her to the Mamelodi hostel to rape her again as punishment for not carrying money on her.
“I quickly thought of a lie. I told them I had brothers and sisters in Mamelodi who could identify me and call the police. It seems I frightened them off because they left afterwards,” she said.
Mabandla ran to a nearby shopping centre for help.
A police van patrolling the area quickly responded.
After telling her story, the policeman said he had seen three men asking for a lift to Mamelodi. They resembled her description of the suspects.
Two of the men were arrested and she identified them as those who raped her.
Mabandla said she could now sleep without having nightmares.
She felt much safer now that her rapists were behind bars, unable to carry out their death threats.