Tourist rape: Three in court

2002-12-02 15:59

Barberton - A suspected gangster accused of hijacking and raping a British tourist in Mpumalanga appeared in court on Monday with a catheter.

Willie Ngwenya (20) was shot in the buttocks while allegedly trying to evade arrest and the bullet pierced his bladder, which now functions only with a catheter.

It was his first court appearance since his arrest. A fourth suspect in the rape has yet to appear as he's being treated for a broken hip at Themba Hospital in KaBokweni near White River.

Ngwenya and two other co-accused, Sipho Mbokane (29) and a trembling Zimbabwean national Michael Dube (20), were not asked to plead on charges of abduction, rape, attempted murder, murder and armed robbery when they appeared in the Nelspruit sexual offences court.

They were remanded pending their next appearance on Tuesday, December 3.

The three were expected to apply for bail on Monday, but instead asked for a state-appointed attorney to represent them on Tuesday.

An unnamed state witness is expected to take the stand and help the State oppose bail.

Rape survivor disclosed her name

"We shall obviously oppose bail because of the nature of the charges and because one of the suspects is a foreigner and might skip the country,"

Inspector Faizel Essack of Barberton police said on Monday. Dube and Mbokane were arrested on November 17, a day after 29-year-old Julie Stevens and her 25-year-old South African friend, Tinus Opperman, were hijacked while sightseeing at Long Tom Pass between Sabie and Lydenburg.

Stevens decided to disclose her name publicly as her way of hitting back at her attackers.

Four men approached the pair and told them they had waited for almost four days for easy targets before they bundled them into Opperman's red Toyota Venture at gunpoint.

The men drove the pair to various shebeens around the province's southern Lowveld where they allegedly drank and boasted to patrons and friends that they were travelling with "white flesh".

The ordeal ended 14 hours and 220km later when the tourists' van overturned along the Barberton/Badplaas road in the early hours of November 17.

Charges against shebeen patrons?

An unsuspecting motorist, Domingo Albert Chamber (37) of Mozambique, stopped to help and was fatally shot in the head.

Police arrested Dube and Mbokane near the crash that day, and Msibi and Ngwenya at Masoyi village near KaBokweni outside White River, two days later.

In the meanwhile, police are looking into the possibility of bringing criminal charges against the shebeen patrons and a sister to one of the accused. They kept silent while the men paraded the woman before them.

"They could have prevented the crime if they had told police about what they had seen," said superintendent Izak van Zyl of the provincial police.

When Mbokane and Dube last appeared in the Barberton magistrate's court on November 26, about 200 people protested outside, brandishing placards demanding "No bail for tourist rapists and murderers" and saying "We love tourists visiting Mpumalanga - don't be scared, we will protect you." - African Eye News Service

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