Cape Town - Two suspected serial rapists appeared in separate cases in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday, collectively facing 23 charges including 11 of rape.
Vuyisile Stofile faces 12 charges - three of rape, three of kidnapping and six of robbery with aggravating circumstances. He is charged with targeting women on their way to the GF Jooste Hospital in Manenberg.
NPA provincial spokesman Eric Ntabazalila said the case would be postponed to today. He said the State had two witnesses yesterday, one of them Stofile’s wife.
Stofile, from Site C, is alleged to have attacked the women while they were going to the hospital between 2012 and last year. The State alleges he showed them a “short cut” to the hospital then raped them at knifepoint. Two of his rape victims were pregnant. According to court documents, Stofile would wait for his lift to work near Nyanga Junction off Duinefontein Road.
There he would ask women whether they were going to the hospital and if they said yes, he would walk with them on a shorter route to the hospital, the papers said. Stofile would then allegedly lure his victims to a field behind the hospital where he raped three at knifepoint. Others were robbed of their possessions.
It is alleged that he attacked his first victim in May 2012. In August that year, he raped two pregnant women, who were going for medical procedures, a week apart. Both were robbed of money and cellphones.
His alleged reign of terror ended in March last year when police, through cellphone data, found him in possession of a rape victim’s cellphone.
Also in the Western Cape High
Court on Tuesday, Sizwe Vambe appeared on 11 charges including eight counts of rape, two of kidnapping and possession of an unlicensed firearm.
He is accused of holding three women against their will and raping them in Gugulethu. The incidents took place between October 2011 and February last year.
The trial resumes on Wednesday.
Cape Times