Cape Town – The government failed Tazne van Wyk at every level.
These were the sentiments of government officials who attended the funeral service of the 8-year-old yesterday.
Tazne was buried at the Belhar graveyard three weeks after she was reported missing near her Connaught Estate home in Ravensmead, where she was last seen with her alleged killer, Moehydien Pangaker, 54.
MEC for Health Nomafrench Mbombo said: “The system failed Tazne, starting from the social system. She was a little girl with loving parents, only to find that there is a b*****d who is looking and seeing an opportunity. He was supposed to be an uncle and take care of Tazne.
“All spheres of the government failed Tazne because it was those rules that saw him released. And it was my rules that said you cannot see the body because it was too decomposed.”
Minister of Police Bheki Cele said conversations around men who kill
children they were supposed to protect needed to be a priority. “What goes on in a man’s head when you equate a 5- or 6-year-old to the mother you sleep with? I’m quoting the MEC here, but indeed they are b*****d men,” he said.
“But as the president said, we must relook at our laws as some are too kind. You look at the crimes of this man that sent him to prison: the death of his own child - for that reason alone he should (never) have even been considered for parole.
Picture: Courtney Africa / African News Agency (ANA)
“If we had done the right thing with this man, this child would still be jumping outside, not lying here. We have failed this child; as the government, we failed.”
Mayor Dan Plato said the government needed to put interventions in place focused on addressing the attitude of men towards women and children.
“What a sad day in Cape Town and Elsies River; another mother and father must bury their loving child. When is it going to end?” he said.
“We need to talk about men in
society and their role, but currently there is no such issue on the government’s programme nationally, or even provincially.
“What I cannot understand is the appetite of old men for children and young girls.
Picture: Courtney Africa / African News Agency (ANA)
“The alleged perpetrator was 54 years old. For Courtney Peters, he was old enough to be her father, and for an 11-year-old girl in Lavender Hill, also a man who lived around 1km away from the victim.”
Yesterday, thousands of mourners gathered at the United Reformed Church in Elsies River where Tazne had been baptised.
Her emotional family fought back tears during a slideshow of pictures documenting a life snuffed out too soon. Tazne’s mother, Carmen van Wyk, wept quietly, clinging to the girl’s father,
Terence Manuel.
Tazne’s white coffin was draped in wreaths and as other mourners bid farewell, they shouted: “Rest in peace” and “You are our angel, Tazne!”
Picture: Courtney Africa / African News Agency (ANA)
T-shirts emblazoned with Tazne’s face appeared to be the official dres -code. Family representative Alvin van Wyk called on everyone to remember Tazne and not let her murder be in vain.
“Tazne’s death is bigger than all of us; it saw a community come together (while searching for her) in making us realise your child is my child, too,” he said.
“I ask that her death not be in vain, (and) the momentum goes further than the day of her funeral.”+