Police were battling to get more information on who had castrated a Katlehong man allegedly caught raping a five-year-old girl, East Rand police said on Wednesday.
”When the police got there everybody was just standing around saying they knew nothing about it,” Sergeant Zithini Dlamini said. ”We can’t get anything.”
The 26-year-old man was castrated by members of the community when he was caught allegedly raping the girl at Mandela Park informal settlement in the East Rand township on Sunday.
The toddler had been playing with friends when she was lured away with the promise of a packet of chips from a nearby tuckshop, police said.
She was led into a shack where a toilet roll was stuffed into her mouth and she was raped. Dlamini said that her mother had asked people in the vicinity where her daughter was and was led to the shack where the man was allegedly caught in the act.
He was dragged out and assaulted before being castrated.
”He was found in a pool of blood with his penis cut off,” said Dlamini. ”No one is talking and the police are asking around but no one is prepared to say anything. We don’t even know what type of sharp object was used.”
The man has been charged with rape in absentia in the Boksburg Magistrate’s Court, with the case returning to court on February 25.
Meanwhile, the girl, who is the only child of a young mother, would be treated for her injuries and counselling would be arranged.
Dlamini said that although the mother ”didn’t see this coming” she cautioned parents and carers to only let their children play in the yard with the gate locked and with strict instructions not to speak to strangers or to go away with anyone, no matter what they promised.
”We do awareness campaigns and we can’t emphasise that enough. We also say to children, ask yourself, ‘Why does this man only want to buy me something and not for all four of us?’.”
Following a similar castration in Benoni on the East Rand in the 1990s, the charges against a group of women arrested for cutting the man’s penis off with a knife were eventually dropped because the victim could not be traced. In that case the man’s penis was reattached.
Gauteng provincial safety and liaison minister Nomvula Mokonyane condemned the castration on Wednesday, saying: ”We cannot allow having people taking the law into their own hands while we have the police and other law-enforcement agencies who are there to ensure that there’s law and order.
”We are a civilised country and we have a Constitution that protects each and every citizen, so let us all respect the supreme law of the country,” she said, adding that tougher sentences and bail conditions for alleged rapists are becoming the norm.
She said that although private citizens can make arrests without a warrant within the terms of the Criminal Procedure Act No 51 of 1977, it is important to note that the suspect must be handed over to the police immediately and unharmed as assaulting a suspect is a punishable offence.
In the 1990s Deputy President Jacob Zuma said the government had asked the South African Law Commission to investigate chemical castration — a procedure involving the injection of hormones that reduce sexual urges in men — as a punishment for sexual offenders.
However, the move has been condemned from some quarters, including the organisation Rape Crisis, which says studies have shown that rape is considered a crime of power and violence, not lust.
Some states in the United States are already using chemical castration for repeat offenders. — Sapa