Prosecutors say he stuffed the body of Sibongiseni Gabada, 36, into a bag and covered it with trash.
Gabada was missing for two weeks before her body was found. Every day people passed by, until finally the smell of decomposing debris grew stronger than the stench of garbage accumulated on top.
“When people asked what was going on there. He said, ‘No, it’s rubbish, I’m going to throw it away.’ That’s the kind of person he was: an animal,” says Gabada’s grandmother, Mavis Gabada.
He cautiously moves forward to look at the place, sobbing. “Why did they kill my granddaughter like a dog?” she asks.
Mavis, now 78, raised Sibongiseni. Even after her granddaughter moved to her own place on the Cape Flats, Mavis says Sibongiseni always took the time to register.
When he came to visit, Sibongiseni played with the family pets, a ginger cat, and an energetic puppy, advised his younger sister, Brenda, and spent time with his children. Sometimes he baked cakes to sell in the neighborhood.
“She came and checked in and made the kids laugh, she loved them very much. If we didn’t see her in two days, we’d start to worry,” says Mavis.
In mid-May, as the days dragged on and Sibongiseni still hadn’t come to the house, Brenda tried to track her sister’s steps with Sibongiseni’s friends. They posted messages on social media and their friends talked about a new boyfriend.
“She always said that when you go out, you should be safe and if you go out you should notify someone at home,” says Brenda.
When Sibongiseni’s body was found next to the alleged killer’s hut, the police quickly arrested her boyfriend.
But just days later, the chief prosecutor dropped the case, leaving the suspect free to leave.
“She was of the opinion that evidence was lacking,” says Bonnie Currie-Gamwo, deputy director of prosecutions in the Western Cape, who is in charge of all homicide cases in the region.
“I saw the protest for the withdrawal on social media. I contacted the prosecutor and told him to send me the file,” she says.
After Currie-Gamwo reviewed the evidence, the suspect was again arrested, taken into custody, and charged with murder. He has yet to file a guilty plea in the case.
“In any system, there will always be cracks,” says Currie-Gamwo.
High-profile cases
But in South Africa, gender rights activists say those cracks are more like chasms.
“I don’t think they are serious about it. If they could deal with gender violence in exactly the same way that they deal with Covid-19, we would be fine,” says Mandisa Monakali, the founder of Ilitha Labanthu, an NGO that helps support victims of gender violence.
Ilitha Labanthu played a decisive role in publicizing the Sibongiseni case and in putting pressure on the judicial authorities. But it is just one of many cases.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa gave a speech to the nation in June about what he called a war on women in South Africa.
“Violence against women and children in our country is unleashed with brutality that defies any form of understanding,” she said. “The women of our country are being raped, they are being killed by men.”
Since the country’s strict blockade was lifted, dozens of high-profile cases of gender-based violence against women and children in South Africa have come to light.
In the past week alone, the Monakali NGO has taken on more than a dozen new suspected cases.
She says that apart from gender, there is no “typical” profile for victims they support with legal advice and assistance. They recently helped a two-year-old rape victim and a victim in her 70s.
Monakali says leaving an abusive relationship 30 years ago inspired her to become involved in activism.
But she says the situation has worsened, not improved, in those three decades. She says the war against women in South Africa has lasted generations.
“I am concerned about my grandchildren, because people now normalize violence against women and femicide, because this happens every day,” she says.
A younger generation of activists is joining the fight. In a protest outside the South African parliament in Cape Town, several hundred women and a handful of men, all dressed in black, shout their demands over a loudspeaker.
One after another, young women step forward and tell their stories of assault, rape, and murder.
“Every day when I open my Facebook it is like a funeral page,” says Ayesha AbouZeid, one of the organizers of the protest. “I think everything we have received in years and years and years is empty promises over and over and over again and I think we are tired of that now. Something has to change.”
Constant fear
The South African parliament recently held another debate on gender violence, and new legislation can be introduced.
But activists like Mandisa Monakali point out that South Africa already has strict legislation, including specific laws for gender-based violence. They say that the change will only come if concrete measures are taken at the level of the police and prosecutors.
Monakali has come with the Gabada family to where the neighbors found Sibongiseni’s body. He says that despite police combing the scene weeks ago, the suspect’s relatives found his bag inside his shack last week.
Monakali extends Sibongiseni’s identification card. “They don’t know what they are doing. They don’t do their job. They are researchers who are supposed to investigate, they don’t do their job,” she says.
Local and regional police authorities did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the case.
The Gabada family saw the suspect in the Sibongiseni case released and then arrested again. Now they want to punish the alleged murderer.
They say it could bring them justice, but it won’t bring her back, and it won’t erase the image of her stuffed in a bag, discarded under a pile of trash.
And above all, it won’t make your fear go away.
“We are not sure. If we go out, we do not know who will follow us. Who will do something like that? Maybe what happened to my sister can happen to me. Maybe it can happen to my children. We went outside in fear,” he says. Brenda Gabada, with tears in her mask.
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