Stuart Hess and Mungo Soggot report on a case that takes the failure of the courts to protect the public to a new extreme
MAMOKGETHI MALEBANA is missing. Lots of children go missing in South Africa. But the disappearance of this seven-year-old child from Katlehong is a shocking indictment of the country’s criminal justice system.
The failure of the courts to protect the public from those whom the police believe to be dangerous criminals – by granting them bail on the presumption of innocence – has been the subject of controversy in the past when killers have been released to kill again. But the case of Mamokgethi Malebana takes the betrayal of innocence to a new extreme.
“She was a clever girl who always liked to go to church,” says her grandmother, Sara Malebana. “She was playful and people loved her.” The girl’s mother is still too upset to talk.
It is not the first time Mamokgethi has disappeared. On November 10 last year she failed to return home from a trip to the local shop. Her mother, Joyce Malebana, and grandmother went looking for her. Children playing in the street said they had seen her entering the home of a neighbour, Dan Mabote.
The two women went into the house and found the child lying on Mabote’s bed, crying. They called the police from the house of another neighbour, who had a phone.
The police came to arrest Mabote …. three days later.
The next day, 29-year-old Mabote appeared in the Germiston Regional Court. On three charges of rape.
It transpired that, before the alleged attack on Mamokgethi, he had been accused of raping a four-year-old and a six-year- old.
But the magistrate, James van Wyk, released Mabote on R2 000 in the face of a police request that he be held in custody as a danger to the public. The case was remanded until March 26.
On March 25, Mamokgethi failed to return home.
When Mabote appeared before the court the next day, the magistrate was told of the child’s disappearance. He postponed the case to May 29 … again allowing Mabote out on bail.
A social worker employed by a local mental health centre, Ekupholeni, investigated and discovered Mabote had been absent from a Germiston car factory where he worked on the day Mamokgethi went missing.
It was also discovered that on that day Mabote had visited a local school and had fetched a 10-year-old boy – explaining that he was taking him and other children to hospital.
The boy told the social worker that, on Mabote’s instructions, he had collected Mamokgethi from her school and had taken her to Mabote’s house. It was the last that was seen of the child.
A week later Mabote, still out on bail, was cornered by members of the local street committee and police had to rescue him from a lynching. That was the last that was seen of Mabote.
Police in Katlehong told the Mail & Guardian this week they had had no evidence on which to charge Mabote with kidnapping the missing girl.
The magistrate said he could not remember the case. “I hear many cases every day.”
The chief director of social services for the Gauteng government, Janette du Preez, said: “We rely heavily on the community for information, and there is nothing one can do if there is no input from the community.”
Pravienna Naidoo, the personal assistant to Gauteng’s MEC for Welfare and Population Development, Ignatius Jacobs, said: “It is happening all the time.”
Minister of Justice Dullah Omar has said he wants the law changed so the courts will refuse bail for serious crimes – an initiative given new emphasis earlier this year following an outcry over high-profile rape cases. He also wants magistrates to play a far more inquisitorial role in bail hearings.
Omar said this week Mamokgethi’s story was a “very serious matter”, but he did not know details of the case.
Meanwhile, Mamokgethi Malebana is missing.