V3680 Jomyt Mbele |
25 |
Mbele, Rabutla and Phaswa were prosecuted on three counts: murder, rape and abduction. They had murdered Mr Joseph Mashiloane, a truck driver, and had abducted and raped Miss Sarah Ngobeni. Each of the charges carried the death sentence.
The deceased, Mr Joseph Mashiloane, was a forty-eight-year-old truck driver. He was en route to Phalaborwa with a consignment of goods and decided to break his journey at Duiwelskloof. He met Miss Ngobeni at a tearoom on the evening of 21 July 1985. She agreed to spend the night with him in his truck. He parked it next to the road near the Sekgopo Township. At the same time Mbele, Rabutla and Phaswa met at Turfloop, some sixty kilometres away, and started an evening of drinking and driving around. They travelled in Rabutla’s minibus and, after a visit to a beer hall in Kgapane, they drove towards Pietersburg and came across Mashiloane’s truck. Phaswa told Rabutla to stop.
Rabutla stopped the minibus about forty metres from the truck and the three men approached the truck in the dark. Mashiloane and Ngobeni were sleeping. Phaswa went to the truck and called the other two over. He then broke the window of the truck and he and Mbele climbed into the truck. Phaswa had a knife. Mashiloane asked them, ‘What are you doing?’ One of them said, ‘Don’t talk to us.’ Phaswa or Mbele stabbed Mashiloane repeatedly and virtually cut his throat.
Rabutla then pulled Miss Ngobeni from the truck and forced her into the back of the minibus. He raped her while Phaswa and Mbele were still engaged at the truck. When they returned from the truck, Mbele drove the minibus away from the scene. The minibus broke down twice on the way to Pietersburg, but each time Rabutla somehow managed to repair it. Rabutla took the wheel after the first breakdown. During the journey Mbele and Phaswa took turns to rape Miss Ngobeni. Eventually they stopped at a petrol filling station on the outskirts of Pietersburg early in the morning. Mbele accompanied Ngobeni to the toilets, but she refused to get back into the minibus. She started complaining to the pump attendants, saying that she had been raped and that the men had killed a truck driver. The three men drove off quickly in the minibus, leaving her there.
Mr Mashiloane’s body was found in his truck early on 22 July 1985. The cause of death was cerebral hypoxia caused by the perforation of the main arteries to the brain. There were numerous injuries, including seven stab wounds, most having been inflicted to his back and neck. One stab wound had cut through the carotid artery. Another had penetrated the right lung. Two other stab wounds had penetrated the liver. The weapon must have been at least eleven centimetres long. The stab wound cutting through the carotid would have caused Mr Mashiloane to lose consciousness immediately. The stab wounds to the lower back alone would have caused death, had Mr Mashiloane not already received the wound severing the carotid.
The Court found that Mbele, Rabutla and Phaswa had decided in advance to find a woman with whom they could have sexual intercourse. When Phaswa found that there was a woman in the truck, he called Rabutla and Mbele over and they decided to get rid of Mr Mashiloane. So they killed him and abducted Miss Ngobeni with the intention of raping her. The Court found that they had acted with a common purpose in respect of all three counts and convicted them.
The Judge passed a double death sentence on the murder and rape counts and sentenced each of them to three years imprisonment on the kidnapping charge.
On 27 November 1987 Mbele, Rabutla and Phaswa were informed that they were to be hanged the next week. On Friday 3 December they were hanged.
They had spent ten months in the death cells. Rabutla was twenty-one years old, Phaswa thirty-two and Mbele thirty-five.
Again I looked for common features.
Klassop was a loner, as Mokwena had been, and was after material gain.
Mpipi and Mohapi had killed in a gang, and so had Mbele, Rabutla and Phaswa, and, of course, Moatche, Scheepers and Wessels.
Delport was in a category of his own, defying reliable analysis other than that he was a paedophile.
Rabutla was a young man, hardly an adult. The extreme youth of these men was beginning to show a pattern.
And Leon Labuschagne fitted the pattern.
But there were some older men too, like Delport, Mpipi, Mohapi and Klassop.
Delport had killed to avoid detection. This was also beginning to emerge as a pattern. For the others the killings were done almost matter of factly, with no obvious motive except the pursuit of their crimes.