Two young girls aged just two and
three were kidnapped, raped and murdered in the town of Diepsloot, on
the outskirts of Johannesburg.
It
was an attack that spread shock and anger across a nation all too
familiar with violent crime, where several sex attacks happen every
minute.
Cousins Yonelisa
and Zandile Mali were snatched from their doorstep in broad daylight and
their bodies discovered in a public toilet nearby, on October 15.
Yonelisa was the only child of Thokozani
Mali. She said that the girls were playing just outside the house and
she was checking on them every five minutes. Then they went silent, CNN
reported.
She alerted relatives, neighbours and
police, who combed the area – one of the most violent places in the
country - in a bid to find them.
She told CNN that she cannot bear to talk about her loss.
She said: ‘I am trying to be strong. When I am sleeping, she always next to me, so when I think of that I feel like crying.’
Five
men have been arrested for the kidnap, rape and murder of the girls and
briefly appeared at a Pretoria court on Thursday. Their identities have
yet to be made public.
Public
protests followed the discovery of the bodies, with one person holding a
banner that read ‘hand these dogs over to us and the people of
Diepsloot’.
The murder of the girls, and torture
of a young boy in Katlehong, were condemned by South African President
Jacob Zuma last week.
He
said: ‘These gruesome incidents of extreme torture and murder of our
children do not belong to the society that we are continuously striving
to build together.
‘Whilst
we appeal to the communities not to take the matters into their hands,
we also want to urge them to work with law enforcement authorities to
find the perpetrators and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the
law.’
There are 55,000
reported cases of sexual violence a year in South Africa, according to
the country's Medical Research Council. But the organisation says that
the real figure is masked by the fact that many attacks go unreported.
Justice in Diepsloot is often meted out by mobs - the nearest police station is 10 miles away.
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