A child victim of alleged serial rapist Fanwell Khumalo — a Johannesburg-based chef — identified the accused in the Johannesburg High Court on Wednesday as the man who made her choose between ”rape and death”.
The girl said Khumalo had approached her on April 22, 2001, while she was on her way back from buying milk and bread, but kept on walking because ”my parents told me not to speak to strangers”.
But, the girl said, Khumalo caught up with her, grabbed her on the shoulder and told her he was a policeman. He then allegedly took her to a deserted spot and raped her.
The girl testified that she had felt great anger towards men since the rape, so much so that she refused even to tell her father about the attack. Two years later, the girl is on medication for depression and has failed at school after previously having good marks.
Also on Wednesday, a distraught mother told the court how she had received a phone call from her daughter’s school on February 13, 1999 saying that her child had gone missing. She rushed to the school by which time the child had turned up
”screaming and crying and saying ‘he said he would kill me if I told anyone”’.
The child had been raped. The mother told the court the entire family had been affected by the rape. She said her daughter now feared policemen and suffered
from nightmares.
Initial counselling did not help her, but there had been some improvement after recent therapy, the mother said. Khumalo, in custody since May 2001, denied all 132 charges against him including 42 of rape when the trial started three weeks
ago. The chef is accused of being the worst child serial rapist in South Africa. Khumalo claims mistaken identity.
State advocate Marile van Heerden has called half of the victims to testify since the trial started. – Sapa