Johannesburg - There was no bleeding, no bruises on the body, no strangulation marks around the neck and no signs of a struggle at the scene.
She might have cried out for help in the middle of the night as she was being attacked. But no one seems to have heard her.
The only indication of the killer’s intention was the toilet brush shoved up her vagina.
Five days after 26-year-old Duduzile Zozo’s body was found at a house about 10m from her home, Thokoza police are still baffled as to what could have happened.
They have been working around the clock to find the killer, and have roped in the community.
However, there have been no leads so far and no one has been arrested.
SAPS spokesman Captain Godfrey Maditsi said police were shocked by the brutality of Zozo’s murder.
“It was so brutal… so unbelievable. We are so stunned by what happened, and the only thing in our mind is to get the perpetrator, and then we will be okay. This was not an ordinary murder. To put that thing into a person… what a painful thing to do,” Maditsi said.
Police were also baffled by how Zozo’s screams could have gone unheard. “It does not make sense at all,” he said.
Zozo’s mother, Thuziwe, last saw her daughter around 9pm on Saturday, when she said she was going to a nearby tavern with friends.
The following morning, at around 8am, a neighbour told her that her daughter’s body had been discovered next door. She rushed there. Her daughter was naked from the waist down, had only one shoe on and there was a toilet brush in her vagina.
What had also hurt her deeply, she said, was the story she was told that a neighbour who had discovered her daughter had called passers-by and told them there was a dead person he did not know in his yard.
“He apparently said ‘I saw a leg, I don’t know whose it is’. How could he say that? They knew each other, they were friends,” the 55-year-old woman said.
Thuziwe also believes that her daughter’s attacker killed her as he did not want to be identified. She is also convinced that the attack on her daughter was a homophobic one because she was openly gay.
“The fact a brush was put in her vagina has convinced me that that it is the only reason she was attacked,” she said.
Many organisations, such as the South African National Aids Council, the Commission on Gender Equality and Cosatu, have condemned the killing.
Zozo will be buried next Saturday.
The Star