Johannesburg - Duduzile Zozo didn’t want to kiss her neighbour – so he throttled her, brutally raped her and left her to die.
On Monday, the man accused of committing these crimes in June last year, Lesley Motleleng, was set to stand trial, but the case had to be postponed for five months because the judge assigned to the case is busy with another matter.
Motleleng, who was arrested last October, was Zozo’s neighbour, and even attended her memorial service the night before she was buried.
Motleleng appeared in the South Gauteng High Court, sitting in the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court, on Monday while the gallery was packed with gay rights activists asking for justice to be served.
Initially, the attack on Zozo was believed to have been an act of “corrective rape” because she was a lesbian.
The indictment briefly outlines what the State said happened in the early hours of June 30 last year, and while it makes no mention of corrective rape, it does describe Zozo as a “26-year-old lesbian person”.
After walking Zozo home from a tavern in Thokoza, the State says, Motleleng professed his love for her and repeatedly asked her to kiss him, but she rejected his advances.
According to the indictment, Motleleng then forcefully kissed her and she said she would tell her brother about it.
Pushing her to the ground, Motleleng then allegedly throttled Zozo “until she lost power”.
“The accused then took a toilet cleaning brush and performed an act of sexual penetration by inserting it into the complainant’s anus,” the indictment reads.
At the time of the murder and Motleleng’s subsequent arrest, it was believed the object was used on her vagina. The indictment does, however, indicate that there were injuries to both her vagina and anus.
“The accused left the deceased lying in the yard… where she was found in the morning,” the indictment reads.
The case was set down for trial on Monday, but Judge Geraldine Borchers had postponed the matter to October 27.
“I’m involved in a very long trial,” she said, adding that Motleleng’s case would be given preference at the next date.
Outside court, about 30 activists and supporters of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights demonstrated and called for Motleleng to be given a harsh sentence.
The project co-ordinator for the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, Dikeledi Sibanda said they were disappointed that the case had been postponed. “It pains us to see that even today, nothing has happened,” she said.