Girl’s confession may see father freed

.

.

Published May 8, 2013

Share

Durban - Three years after his daughter admitted that she had lied about him having raped her, a Durban man has renewed hope that he will be released from Westville Prison soon.

 Cedrick Shezi, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2005 for two rape convictions, was last week granted leave by the Supreme Court of Appeal to have the convictions and sentence reviewed.

An application for bail has also been made to the Durban High Court and Shezi is waiting for a date for the hearing.

 Shezi, 39, whose home was in KwaMashu, but who was living in Clermont at the time of his arrest, has always maintained his innocence.

“He is very depressed. He has twice attempted suicide. But now (in the wake of the recent developments), he has got new hope,” said Derrick Mdluli, the director of the prisoner advocacy group, Justice for Prisoners and Detainees Trust.

Shezi’s daughter, Pinky Dube, now 18, had initially claimed that her father had raped her when she was eight.

But Dube - who gave the Sunday Times permission to use her name - later told her school principal and social workers that her mother, who was estranged from her husband, had put her up to it, coaching her about what to say had happened.

She feared for her mother and did not understand the consequences of what was happening, a report, written by the Centre For Child Law, said in 2010.

Her mother died in 2007.

Mdluli said that the grounds for applying for bail were that Shezi’s daughter had been interviewed by two separate sets of social workers and that both interviews had been consistent: that she had told them the truth (that she had lied to the authorities).

Asked about medical evidence, Mdluli said that there had been a medical report that she had wounds and that “something had happened”.

“Samples were supposed to have been taken for DNA but no DNA was done,” he said.

Mdluli said he had had a long discussion with Shezi who had “no issues” with his daughter, who was young at the time, although he would have done with his wife, had she lived.

Dube could not be reached.

She told the Sunday Times that she had not been raped. She regretted what she had done, wanted to apologise to her father and hoped he would forgive her.

Daily News

Related Topics: