Cape Town – Four years after Stacha Arendse was found murdered and raped behind the Swartklip Sports Centre in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain, the discovery of another young female’s body has shocked the community.
Police have opened a death inquest after the decomposed body was found on Friday. The body was discovered by a 6-year-old boy playing on a makeshift soccer field at the centre.
Civil society organisations and residents fear that the decaying sports centre can become a dumping ground for dead bodies, especially those of children.
Rando Tango, 32, confessed to raping the 11-year-old Arendse twice in his home, then murdering her because he was afraid she would tell her mother, who was his neighbour. After strangling her, he covered her body in a sheet and placed it in a rubbish bin, which he wheeled to the sport centre. Tango received three life sentences.
Built in 2010 with funds from the Fifa World Cup, the once state-of-the arts centre has fallen into disrepair since May 2016 after a geyser burst, damaging the wooden flooring, with vandalism wreaking further havoc.
“I will spare you the gory details of the scene, as these are too graphic to comprehend,” said Shanaaz Allie, founder of Mosadie Gives Back, an NPO that has been feeding tens of thousands of vulnerable children from Tafelsig for the past few years.
“The worst part is that this is not the first time a dead child was found here,” added Allie, known in the community as the ’’Mother Theresa of Mitchells Plain’’.
“In June last year, we managed to mobilise the City of Cape Town to clean up the area, but we can’t get them back on a regular basis. We are now in talks with them again, but cleaning once isn’t enough as some community members continue to dump their garbage on this field, making it impossible for us to keep it clean.
’’When we try and stop them, they threaten to kill us. We need a long-term solution to this problem.
’’How many dead children must be found there before something is being done?”
Sharon Miller, a long-time supporter of Allie in her feeding scheme, also urged for more action from the City to ensure the safety of children from Mitchells Plain safe.
“Implementing sustainable garbage removal and ongoing programmes to keep the area clean and safe will play a pivotal role in keeping our children safe,” said Miller.
The sport centre, a stone’s throw from Allie’s under-equipped home from which she feeds countless children, could also have served as a suitable venue from where the children could collect their meals.
IOL