A DUO from Mpumalanga has been convicted of raping and murdering their 12-year-old cousin.
In 2016, the male cousin, who was 17 years at the time of the crime, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, while the female cousin, who was 21 at the time of crime, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
However, when the Director of Public Prosecution appealed both sentences because they were "too lenient and caused a sense of shock", they were upheld and replaced by the Supreme Court of Appeals.
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Both were sentenced to life imprisonment for a crime committed on the night of 7 December and in the early hours of 8 December 2013, when the deceased was visiting her cousin's home, as they lived in the same premises at Moloto in Kwa-Mhlanga, Mpumalanga.
That night, the deceased was woken up from her peaceful sleep and dragged outside by her cousin, where she was then raped by the male cousin before killing her.
In the morning, her blood-stained clothes and the spade that had been used to "chop off" various parts of her head were discovered in the neighbour’s toilet, while her body lay in a shallow grave in the yard.
While the male cousin confessed to the murder after being forced by the female cousin, it was shocking to hear that the deceased was not his only victim.
He had previously raped another woman and then stabbed her 20 times, but fortunately she survived.
Meanwhile, the judge said that the offences were committed in a brutal fashion, which exposed the deceased to an amount of suffering before her death.
As for the male cousin, the judge said he had to be given a lengthy sentence that would ‘remove’ him from society for long enough for him to take accountability for his actions.
As a result, the judge handed both the man and woman life sentences for their heinous crime
