Hijacker and murderer William Kekana could have been stopped in his tracks six years ago if police had bothered to perform basic forensic work during his arrest, his policeman father believes.
Kekana (20) was sentenced to life imprisonment and 35 years by the Pretoria High Court two weeks ago after being convicted of hijacking and killing Jacobus Geldenhuys.
Geldenhuys was shot in the head three times, execution-style, and robbed of his bakkie, wallet, cellphone and firearm in July last year.
But Kekana gained greater notoriety as the co-perpetrator in the kidnapping and brutal killing of baby Kayla Rawstone, her mother Janine Drennen and grandmother Hester Rawstone, whose bodies were dumped outside Pretoria.
While his accomplice, Fido Baloyi, raped Drennen, Kekana raped a 17-year-old girl who had been kidnapped to give him “something to do while he [Baloyi] was busy with the white woman”. Baloyi was later shot dead by a policeman during an arrest attempt.
Judgement will be delivered next month, but Kekana has pleaded guilty to 10 charges including rape, attempted murder, kidnapping and hijacking.
The Mail & Guardian interviewed his father, Inspector Herbert Kekana, this week in Hammanskraal, where the family lives. He said his son engaged in criminal activity from the age of 14, and that his conviction in the Pretoria High Court was the first, as the criminal justice system had failed to link numerous other offences over the past six years. These included theft, assault and “minor” robberies.
Inspector Kekana said when William Kekana was under age, police would insist on releasing him into his care, despite his warnings that he could not control his delinquent son. “Twice he was released to me and he ran away. He would come back each time with a different policeman who had arrested him for a new and different crime. Police would insist, saying you can’t be afraid of your own child as a policeman.”
Inspector Kekana said that after several incidents his son was arrested and sent to a reformatory from which he escaped twice. “When he was re-arrested I told the police about the old cases. I asked the particular policeman to get in touch with all the other policemen who came to see me before so that they could work on a strong case that would not allow bail.
“I asked them to go for fingerprints at the local criminal record control centre to make the link to other cases. But that never happened.”
Inspector Kekana said his son disappeared for long spells before appearing as an accused in a murder trial at the end of 2002, and again walking free. He was found not guilty. When his father confronted him, he blamed the murder on a friend.
After the trial, William Kekana told his parents he wanted to repent and go to church, and his mother took him to the Zionist Christian Church. But he disappeared again, resurfacing as the accused in the two cases for which he hit the headlines.
Inspector Kekana believes the final outcome could have been avoided. “If he had been once sentenced to six or 12 months for the early minor offences, he might have seen the error of his ways.”
Pretoria police spokesperson Superintendent MornÃ