Sihle Mlambo
Durban: A 4-year-old girl who was abducted, raped, then hanged from a tree with strips of a blanket, has survived and is in hospital with her family at her bedside.
The little girl’s cries for help in the early hours of Saturday in Waterloo, near Verulam, alerted passers-by on their way to work, with one of them rushing to her aid.
According to reports, the person who took and raped the girl cut a blanket in strips and tried to hang her.
The child was taken from the two-room government house she shares with her grandmother, uncle and the uncle’s girlfriend – after the grandmother left the house at about 5am.
When the gran returned an hour later, she found the child was not in her bed and her bag had been tampered with, allegedly by the suspect who may have been looking for money.
“I recycle bottles to feed the family,” explained the grandmother, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the girl. “So I had to meet other grannies very early to find out about this business of ours because this is what we do to survive. I locked the door and left the baby fast asleep.”
“The devil is alive in Waterloo,” the angry and hurt grandmother said on Monday night.
“We don’t know who to trust any more, what must we do. We are worried by this terrible behaviour and no one is safe any more.
“The criminals rape everyone, they rape us old women, they abuse girls and boys, everybody is getting abused,” she said.
KZN police spokesman Major Thulani Zwane confirmed that the Phoenix Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit was investigating the rape, kidnapping and attempted murder but no arrests had been made.
The grandmother said she was grateful to the community for the support and said young men had rallied to search for the girl when she alerted neighbours to her disappearance.
Ward councillor Mxolisi Nzimbomvu said: “We are counting on the police and the community to assist in finding this criminal.
“As the councillor I must say that we are shocked because, although there have been cases of rape before, it is the first time that this happens to a small child.
“When our children get raped it means we cannot even leave them in the house because the community is not safe anymore, we must take them on our backs everywhere we go,” he said. – Daily News