The mother of a 16-year-old girl, who was allegedly raped by a traditional healer, says she wants the man to spend the rest of his life in jail. It is alleged that the 76-year-old man used his position as the family’s traditional healer to gain access to the teenager and allegedly raped her twice.
The woman says the rape has left her shaken and in disbelief. The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her child, says the man lived in their home for three years while he was training her to become a sangoma. She alleges that he gained alone time with the child by telling the woman that he needed to perform cleansing ceremonies on the teenager.
“I managed to get time to speak to my daughter in private, that’s when she opened up and told me that ‘this man is raping me’. Just like that. So you can think for yourself as a mother, as a parent, even if it wasn’t your own biological child how you would have felt at that point in time. then I was thinking oh my goodness, I wonder how long this thing took place because he’s been here, I have been under his training for the past three years.”
The mother is pleading for justice for her child.
“Eish, I just don’t want to see him that’s all I can say. I don’t want anything to do with him. And going to court also having to see him, though I don’t talk to him directly, eats me up inside as to why? I was so good to him. I was like a daughter to him, I did everything. So I don’t want to see him. I just want him behind bars.”
Meanwhile, the National Unitary Professional Association for African Traditional Health Practitioners says allegations of rape against any traditional healer taints the work of traditional healers.
The association’s Northern Cape secretary Benny Collins says: “If the court can call us, we can be against him. We can stand for the family and tell the court that this old man must go to jail. And this will be a lesson to the next person who will also try to do these things.”
The man appeared in the Warrenton Magistrate’s Court this week where his bail application was postponed to the 9th of February.
