Posted on 12/13/2001 9:58:21 AM PST by Gritty
South Africa's slide into anarchy continued in recent months. Some of the crimes and events were so horrific that they made global headlines.
One such headline was the "baby rape" of a tiny infant in South Africa. Six men, aged between 24 and 66, are accused of raping and sodomizing the baby girl. The baby, who has been dubbed "Tshepang" ("Have Hope") to protect her identity, suffered injuries to her vagina and anus. Doctors say she is recovering slowly physically, but is likely to have long-term psychological trauma.
Many black men in South Africa believe that if they rape a virgin they will be cured of AIDS. Exact numbers of men who hold this belief are unknown but it is considerable, perhaps into the millions.
South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma told the Armed Forces Press that he "attributed the gang-rape of a nine-month-old baby to a lack of morality he blamed on apartheid."
Zuma added that the rape in the small northern township of Louisville showed that "something was seriously amiss" in the country.
"Apartheid left a legacy of breakdown of the moral fabric of our society. Apartheid sowed the seeds of the breakdown of the family. The molestation of children is a symptom of this degeneration," Zuma told South Africa's National Assembly.
The AFP reported that the raped baby's mother had become pregnant after she was raped and that her grandmother too had been raped in the same house where the baby was raped. She angrily listed similar cases in the past month, including those of a 14-month-old baby raped by her uncles and of a three-year-old girl who died after she was raped by her father.
This writer has reported the spread of Islam from Libya and the Osama bin Laden network into South Africa and Zimbabwe. Islamics in South Africa have asked the South African government to sign up to fight with the Taliban against the United States in Afghanistan.
The Afrikaans-language Beeld reported that, "The Muslims are reacting to calls made by terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, who urged his followers on a pre-recorded video tape shown worldwide to launch a holy war against America and Americans. The South African government has warned its citizens that they will be prosecuted if they try to heed bin Laden."
The article continued; "Thousands of supporters of Muslims Against Illegitimate Leaders in Cape Town shouting anti-US slogans have presented a memorandum against the US-led raids in Afghanistan at the United States Consulate in Cape Town. Supporters of radical Muslim terrorists, numerically a small minority in South Africa, are seen to have gained great influence with the ruling communist regime due to their support for the ANC during its terrorist days."
Another shocking event hit the headlines in South Africa when South Africa's former First Lady, Mrs Marike de Klerk, found murdered last week. Marike de Klerk, 64, ex-wife of South Africa's last Afrikaner president Frederick W de Klerk, was stabbed in the back. However, the South African Police forensic squad reported that the cause of death had been strangulation. The South African Star reported that "The motive is unknown: nothing was robbed and police found no signs of forced entry into the high-security compound she was living in, the newspaper reports. Police forensic experts estimate that she had been murdered 36 hours earlier.
Business Day, South Africa's top financial newspaper, usually very pro-government , called on the country's current president, African National Congress leader Thabo Mbeki, to aggressively start combating the widespread violent crime epidemic, describing it as an orgy of violence, a "national emergency" which is forcing peace-loving citizens into fortress-like isolation inside their homes and businesses while criminals are having a free reign. Business Day warned: "South Africa is not safe for investment. South Africa is not safe, period.
Commenting on the murder of Marike De Klerk, South African journalist Jan Lamprecht told this writer, "Mrs De Klerk was very brutally murdered. She was stabbed in the back and strangled to death with quite a lot of force. On Radio Jacaranda today I heard a former minister who lived near her in the apartment complex discuss the matter. He said the security there was extremely tight. It seems like it was a very "upper class" type of place. Evidence is surfacing which shows that she must have let the attacker into her apartment and that the murderer was known to her. They are investigating the possibility of rape."
"What I can't understand is why anyone would want to kill her. I'm no policeman, but I believe profiling shows that when someone is murdered they first check up on spouses, lovers, ex-spouses and ex-lovers. The fact that she was killed so professionally that nobody even knew she was dead is interesting. The killer might not even be in the country. It turns out that Mrs De Klerk authored two books and was quite outspoken. Apparently she's a bright woman and she spoke her mind -- all of which is news to me. I thought she was a wall-flower sort."
Lamprecht also said, " I have a feeling this could turn out to be very interesting. However, knowing our police and legal system I doubt very much if we will ever really know what happened. My bet is our Police force couldn't find the killer even if he came and kicked them in the face. I must say it is a sad and barbaric end to the life of a woman who, as far as I can tell never shamed us as South Africans."
Dutch journalist Adriana Stuijt, an expert on South Africa, told this writer, "We have an updated front page stories on about Marike de Klerk's murder. The man who was since then arrested and had "confessed" before a magistrate to the murder a day after his arrest, seemed very bewildered when he appeared in Cape Town magistrate's court on Monday. The police also said they believed others had also been involved in Mrs de Klerk's murder."
"I knew Mrs de Klerk as a fine lady who was dragged into public life very much against her will. However once in the public limelight, she always behaved with great decorum and dressed stylishly without leading a lavish lifestyle. She was a sober, unpretentious, Christian-Protestant woman whose maternal grandfather had been from a working-class background, having been a baker from The Netherlands."
Stuijt added, " She and Frederick were the parents of three adopted children. Many people in South Africa had a popular nickname for her because she looked and acted so very similarly to a very dear little Afrikaans cartoon character often seen on television in that country, called 'Dear Little Witch.' (Liewe Heksie). Afrikaner people often give each other nicknames especially when they are very fond of such persons and so I never saw this nickname as anything except a very affectionate one."
"My husband and I were totally devastated by her murder - and especially about the fact that the international TV news media could not even bother to show a half-second sound bite of this previous First Lady of South Africa. Had this tragically-murdered Afrikaner woman been someone else - for instance if, heaven forbid that this would never happen) the ex-Mrs Nelson Mandela were to be been murdered in such a mysterious fashion -- such a murder undoubtedly would have created a huge international media hysteria and outcry. The fact that the international news media has remained so utterly silent about Mrs de Klerk, tells us more about the left-wing "politically correct" news Bias of those journalists than it does about the current tragic situation in post-apartheid South Africa."
Anthony C. LoBaido is an international correspondent and photographer for WorldNetDaily.com
I though that morality comes from the parents and the church. Which of these did not exist under apartheid?
He must have learned this spiel from Jesse Jackson.
He certainly wasn't going to attribute it to a backwards and ignorant people with less morals and sense than the average tse-tse fly, was he? Or the lack of action by their racist and socialist government who believes every wrong is the fault of apartheid?
Ephesians 4: 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more."
Perhaps someone should start a new rumor for the rapists to believe, something about self-mutilation or hanging by the neck or something like that. It boggles the moral mind that a human could do such a thing to anyone, never mind to a defenseless baby.
Hell awaits.
Stay well - stay saf e- Stay armed - Yorktown
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.