Cheche Selepe
Life has not been the same for the Malebane household in Katlehong, near Germiston, since the brutal rape and subsequent murder of six-year-old Mamokgethi Malebane last year.
Mamokgethi’s younger sister Emma and the other children in the neighbourhood are obeying the new law of the household: never shake the hand of any male stranger. Do not let him come close to you, even if he has just shaken hands with all other members of the household in your presence.
When Joyce Malebane heard the news that her daughter’s alleged rapist and murderer Dan Mabote had escaped from Sterkfontein mental hospital on December 28, she turned her holiday in the Northern Province into a self-imposed exile. Mabote was in Sterkfontein for observation.
A neighbour of the Malebanes, Mabote had been arrested for allegedly raping Mamokgethi Malebane and later, while out on bail, murdering the child the day before his trial was due to begin.
Joyce Malebane – who returned home when she’d heard Mabote was believed to be in the north or north-west of the country – said she is concerned about her safety, but ready for the court hearing set for January 15.
“I do not have any background information relating to the escape or concerning security for myself and the other witnesses, except that I am told police are patrolling here daily,” she says.
Ironically, on the day she returned from vacation not a single policeman came to patrol, up to the time the photographer and I left at 8pm. “What concerns me most is security for me and the other witnesses. Since I arrived, I haven’t seen any police around here.”
As she talks her father, Jonas Malebane, interjects: “The police do come here, but there is something wrong today. They haven’t come.”
Mamokgethi’s grandmother, Sarah Malebane, has been sitting next to the window, checking to see who comes to the house and whether the children are playing safely outside.
“If the police are serious about their job and they really do their work they will get the culprit,” says Joyce Malebane. “But if they play, then …” she pauses. “This man has come out for me now. If I am killed then he knows he will have got the key witness and probably he will win the case.”
Joyce Malebane and her parents disagree on whom to blame for the escape.
“Not this government,” says her mother. “The old apartheid one probably, and the [alleged] murderer’s family and the hospital are all to be blamed. But not this government of the people.”
But her husband, supported by his daughter, seems to disagree. According to him, officials at Sterkfontein are refusing access to members of the local community policing forum and the investigating officer in order to examine the point where the escape took place.
On the issue of her security, Joyce Malebane says: “When it comes to the safety of the perpetrators the state is firm and efficient, but with victims it seems not to care.”
A nephew of the alleged murderer, she says, who brought her daughter to Mabote on the day she died “is given full protection not only because he is a minor, but because he is a perpetrator. However, we are the victims and protection is not given to us. Tomorrow I will contact all the other witnesses and we will try to make our own security arrangements.”
She trusts no one. It takes 15 minutes to convince her to pose for a photograph showing only her back. “How do I know that he won’t get my picture in the newspaper and give it to people to hunt and kill me?”
Newspapers published the fact that she was in Pietersburg, and then: “I heard that he was in Pietersburg. I know him, he uses a lot of muti, he is very dangerous.
“To the community, I say that whenever you see him, report him because what he did to Mamokgethi can also happen to your child. I am told that people who do such things do them again and again.”