SERIAL RAPIST SENTENCED AFTER DNA LINK
The High Court of South Africa, Eastern Cape Division, Bhisho, sentenced Sipho “Mahlathini” Mjuza (49) to life imprisonment plus 23 years for his seven-year reign of terror, during which he broke into houses of women and raped them. The court sentenced him to life for raping an elderly woman, 15 years for raping a middle-aged woman and eight years for housebreaking. Unfortunately, he could not be convicted of the rape of another elderly victim, even though he was linked through DNA. She could not testify because she suffered from dementia due to old age.
Mjuza committed the crimes in different magisterial districts, under the jurisdictions of Bhisho, Makhanda and Centane, in the Eastern Cape, which necessitated that his cases be centralised. In all the incidences, the victims could not identify their attacker. He was only arrested after he was convicted of housebreaking and attempted in an unrelated case of an incident that occurred in December 2015 in East London, for which he was sentenced to an effective 16-year imprisonment term. As a result of that conviction, his specimens were placed in the database of the Forensic Science Laboratory.
During the evening of 06 September 2008, the then 62-year-old victim had just taken a bath when she was attacked by someone who broke the light bulb and raped her at her home in Tamara village, near Qonce (formerly King Williams Town). Another 81-year-old granny was attacked and raped while sleeping in her house in Fort Murray Area near the district of Zwelitsha. On 30 March 2015, another woman adult female was sleeping at her home in Fingo Village in Makhanda when the door to her room was pushed open by the assailant who raped her at knifepoint before fleeing the scene. Another woman was later accosted while walking from a traditional ceremony at Nantsana village in Centane on 04 April 2015. She was sexually assaulted by a person she could not identify. Mjuza was only later positively linked to all these cases through DNA.
During the trial, he pleaded not guilty claiming that he had chronic forgetfulness when he was drunk and could not remember committing the crimes. By leading forensic and oral evidence, State Advocate Nocwaka Tokota managed to convince the court that Mjuza was guilty as charged. All cases of sexual violence encroach on the rights to dignity and privacy of the victims as enshrined in our constitution hence the NPA aggressively prosecutes these cases.
