'My torture hell'

Published Nov 21, 2012

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Johannesburg - Tied to a bed and gagged, in agony and bleeding from wounds inflicted by torture, Ina Bonnette listened helplessly as her son pleaded and begged for his life. Then she heard the shots.

“Conrad told Kotze ‘no oom, please’. Then I heard a shot. He again said ‘oom, please, don’t.’ There was another shot… and another shot.”

Bonnette was giving evidence on Tuesday in the Pretoria High Court about what happened on January 3, when she was tortured before being gang-raped, allegedly by three men on the instructions of her ex-husband Johan Kotze.

While he cut off her nipples, he looked her in the eye and told her: “I love you, Ounooi [old girl],” Bonnette told a select few who were allowed to attend her evidence, led in camera.

As she lay helpless on the bed, she had heard how her 19-year-old son, Conrad Bonnette, who had just completed his first year as a student at Tukkies, had been shot dead in the room next door.

Judge Bert Bam noted a plea of not guilty this week on behalf of Kotze after the accused had refused to enter a plea.

His three co-accused - Andries Sithole, 42, Pieta Mohlane, 23, and Frans Mphara, 29, pleaded not guilty to the charges, including four of rape and one of murder. They said they were forced to take part in the events of that day.

There was hardly a dry eye in court on Tuesday as an emotional Bonnette gave graphic evidence of how she had been subjected to torture.

According to her testimony, Kotze phoned Conrad and summoned him. By the time Conrad arrived, Bonnette had already been gang-raped, her breasts mutilated, and she was semi-conscious.

Kotze left her on the bed and met Conrad outside. Then Bonnette heard footsteps in the passage, followed by her son’s pleas. Then gunshots rang out. Later, a friend arrived and untied her.

“I called ‘Boeta, Boeta’. He did not react. I went down on my knees and I tried to pick my child up. I had no feeling in my hands due to the cable ties [used to tie her up]. I punched my hands against the wall to try and get the feeling back.

“I then pushed my hands under his body and I felt it was wet. I noticed blood on my hands... I also saw blood on him.

“I realised Conrad was dead and I shouted ‘we must get out of here because Kotze will kill us all’,” she testified.

She said Kotze had called her to a meeting at the property, and after speaking in the garden for a while, he had coaxed her into the house and bedroom. He had said he had a box with her things there.

According to her evidence, the scene for her torture had been set.

The three men instructed by her husband to assist were hiding in a cupboard, a rope was already tied to the windows and the wardrobe was stocked with “torture tools”.

As she entered the bedroom, Kotze threw a towel over her head.

“I tried to get it off me but he pulled it tighter. He threw me on the bed and the light went on. I then saw three men in the room. I screamed and kicked. He called Andries [Sithole] to come and help.”

Bonnette said she would especially never forget Sithole’s face. “It’s those eyes,” she said.

The men tied her up with the ropes and taped over her face and mouth. They left a breathing hole.

“He said: ‘today you will feel how it feels to be screwed by k*****s’. He hurled abuse at me and said I stuffed up his life… He tried to pull down my pants and said ‘today you are going to sh*t’”.

Bonnette said she put up a fight and he called Sithole to assist him. At one point Kotze left the room.

Bonnette said: “I begged the three men with my eyes to help me.”

Kotze returned and pinched her breasts with pliers and cut them with a paper cutter.

“While cutting off my nipple, he looked me in the eye and told me ‘I love you, Ounooi’.”

Following more trips to the cupboard to fetch tools, he pushed nails into her breasts and tried to squeeze out the silicone. He also pushed objects into her private parts. Bonnette said: “He the whole time told me I would never realise how much he loved me.”

“… He said when my child arrived, he was going to force him to have sex with me, or else he was going to shoot me. He said if he had been able to get hold of my daughter that day, she would have suffered the same fate as me.”

As Bonnette testified, Kotze and his co-accused looked her straight in the eye.

The trial continues.

The Star

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