The trail began when a dog was found wandering around Shayamoya township outside Umzinto on KwaZulu-Natal’s south coast in early September. It had the head of a woman clamped in its jaws.
This has led to the gruesome discovery of the decomposing bodies of nine young women and the exhumation of a tenth in Majola in the Eastern Cape.
The ‘sugar-cane killerâ€, as the 36-year-old alleged perpetrator has been dubbed by local media, appeared in the Umzinto Magistrate’s Court this week with two alleged accomplices — a woman and a 28-year-old man, against whom charges were dropped because of insufficient evidence. The identity of the accused is known to the Mail & Guardian, but has been withheld at the request of the police to facilitate an identity parade.
‘All the victims were females between the age of 18 and 35 and we suspect the cause of death was strangulation,†says police spokesperson Zandra Hechter. With the case adjourned until November, Hechter says the search for more bodies will continue in what police believe is another serial killer case. The suspect has already pointed out three bodies to police.
Psychological profiler Micki Pistorius — who worked on the case involving the country’s most prolific serial killer, Moses Sithole — claims in her book, Catch Me a Killer, that South Africa has the second-highest number of serial killers in the world, trailing only the United States.
In KwaZulu-Natal alone there have been two as-yet-to-be-confirmed cases of serial killings. The Riverman killer, who is still at large, raped and killed 13 women between 1999 and 2001, dumping their bodies on the banks, or within a 1km radius, of the Umhlangeni River. The Fosaville killer is alleged to have killed 13 women on a piece of privately owned land in Fosaville, near Durban.
‘To answer why people become serial killers in South Africa, you also have to ask why people become ordinary killers? There are the socio-political reasons; this is a violent society with a violent history of colonialism and apartheid,†says University of KwaZulu-Natal psychology lecturer Anthony Collins, who focuses on violence and society.
He says children have been exposed to political violence and to breakdowns in family structures because of the migrant labour system and that parents do not have the time to give enough care to their children.
‘So it is the social history of South Africa combined with individual psychological development,†says Collins of the country’s high murder rates.
In two of South Africa’s most recent serial killer cases — Sithole, who was convicted of the murder and rape of 38 female victims and is serving a 2 400-year sentence, and Cedric Maake, the Wemmer Pan killer, who was convicted of 27 murders and 14 rapes in a spree between 1996 and 1997 — victims were lured with promises of employment. The family of 35-year-old Nombali Ngcobo, the only victim of the sugar-cane killer to be identified so far, say she disappeared after going off with a man she had befriended and had promised her a job paying R5 000 a month.
Are victims of poverty more likely to be victims of serial killers? ‘Most serial killers tend to target victims because they are vulnerable,†says Collins.
‘Poor victims also tend not to be missed as much as rich victims. You need a good number of poor people to die before the police will join the dots, but if somebody was to go around taking out middle-class people, they would probably get nabbed quicker.
‘Serial killings in South Africa usually do get solved. First, if you have the full investigative team and with proper investigation — as evidenced by the [David] Rattray case — cases get solved. Second, serial killings are repetitive by nature: the perpetrator will continue killing in a similar manner and will usually revisit the site. There is also the issue of serial killers wanting to get caught.â€