A 24-YEAR-OLD man from Tyoksville, Fort Beaufort, has been convicted of the rape of an eight-year-old girl.
The incident occurred on 22 September last year when the accused, Matshawe Lolwana, found the complainant playing behind a local house.
He gagged her, bound her hands, and raped her. Approached by a passer-by who shouted at him, Lolwana fled the scene.
A 24-YEAR-OLD man from Tyoksville, Fort Beaufort, has been convicted of the rape of an eight-year-old girl.
The incident occurred on 22 September last year when the accused, Matshawe Lolwana, found the complainant playing behind a local house.
He gagged her, bound her hands, and raped her. Approached by a passer-by who shouted at him, Lolwana fled the scene.
Lolwana, who was armed with a knife, threatened the complainant; saying that he would stab her if she told her mother about her rape.
The complainant freed herself and, on her way home, encountered her younger brother who asked her why she was crying. She told him what had happened.
However, the complainant was reluctant to inform her mother but, after she told her uncle, the matter was reported to the police nine days later.
Upon hearing about the incident the community approached Lolwana and threatened him with violence. The complainant’s uncle removed Lolwana from the situation and delivered him into police custody.
When he was released two days later he went to the complainant’s home, approached her mother, and threatened her with a knife, claiming that he would kill and rape her and her children if they did not drop the charge laid against him.
However, the complainant’s mother ignored the threat and Lolwana was further charged with assault after this incident. During the trial, the young complainant gave compelling evidence.
Giving her testimony via camera from a room adjacent to the court she was asked, in a play-like scenario, to show the court what the accused had done to her.
Without hesitation she used the anatomically correct dolls provided to re-enact her own rape. Members of the gallery exclaimed with shock at the graphic nature of her evidence.
After a full hour of testimony the court adjourned to allow the complainant to rest. During cross-examination by Lolwana’s defence the young complainant also remained resolute, saying “he’s lying” repeatedly when told Lolwana’s ersion of events.
However she became more and more upset as Lolwana’s claims were relayed to her. The ourt adjourned briefly to allow the complainant some time to calm down, during which defence attorney Mziwanele Solani apologised to the prosecution for having to cross-examine the young complainant, but added that he was compelled to challenge her account.
The complainant’s testimony was concluded when she was asked to enter the court with a social worker for a form of identity parade.
Out of the approximately 20 people in court, including police officers, court officials and the public gallery, the complainant twice, clearly and forcefully, pointed to Lolwana when asked to identify the man who raped her.
The prosecution then called Doctor Makubalo of Fort Beaufort Provincial Hospital to the stand. She testified that the complainant’s hymen had been completely eradicated and that, after nine days, a sexually transmitted infection was clearly present in her body.
The defence did not contest that the complainant had been raped. During the cross-examination of Lolwana, state prosecutor Nicky Turner grew increasingly frustrated with him, at one point calling him an “outrageous, outright liar”.
The accused, who left school in Grade 5 and has several prior convictions for housebreaking, changed his testimony from question to question, often ignoring the questions entirely.
Makuala found Lolwana guilty of rape, but said that the state failed to prove that he had assaulted the complainant’s mother.
After sentencing the state called on clinical psychologist Karen Andrews to testify in aggravation of the sentence.
She testified that the complainant had experienced the profound threat of annihilation and a total loss of control during her rape.
Andrews said that the complainant was severely traumatised, living in such fear that she is unable to function, which will impede her intellectual, social and emotional growth.
The defence asked that the judge consider that this was Lolwana’s first violent offence. Sentencing will take place on 21 May.
