The body of Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe’s four-year-old granddaughter was found underneath a bed in one of the rooms of her parents’ Lenasia home, police said on Thursday.
The half-naked Makgabo Bernice Matlala was found at her parents’ house after a 24-hour manhunt was launched, police spokesperson Nthabiseng Mazibuko said. It was not immediately clear how she died.
Makgabo was thought kidnapped in a robbery on Wednesday and a massive manhunt was launched for the kidnappers. Makgabo is the daughter of Springs magistrate Stephen Matlala.
Her nanny was blindfolded and gang-raped by three men in the attack. The attackers ransacked the house, stealing DVDs and cellphones. They then picked up Makgabo and left.
Mazibuko could not confirm if there were any injuries to the child’s body, but said forensic investigators were working on collecting evidence from the house when the discovery was made.
”You remember when working on the scene we called in the crime expert, and the procedure has been to work on one room until all evidence is collected,” Mazibuko said when asked why the body was found at the scene of the crime, after so many hours of searching for her.
Ngoepe and Makgabo’s immediate family were informed of the discovery by police late on Thursday afternoon.
No further information was immediately available.
Mazibuko said on Wednesday that preliminary investigations ruled out the possibility of a link between the supposed kidnapping and the Jacob Zuma rape trial, from which Ngoepe had recused himself.
”There is no link at all. The findings of our preliminary investigations haven’t taken us in that direction. There is nothing that indicates a link,” Mazibuko said.
Ngoepe added that there was no reason for the crime and the Zuma rape case to be linked.
”As far as I know, I’ve no reason to link that and I would actually have preferred not even to think along those lines because at this stage, I’ve no reason to think of any linkage,” he told the South African Broadcasting Corporation. — Sapa