Johannes Kana has confessed to raping, kicking and punching 17-year-old Anene Booysen but not to murdering her.
|||Bredasdorp - Johannes Kana has confessed to raping, kicking and punching 17-year-old Anene Booysen but not to murdering her, insisting she was alive when he left her.
The National Prosecuting Authority has rejected Kana’s guilty plea on the rape charge because it has information indicating he has not told the full story of what happened at the crime scene.
The State also believes that Kana murdered Booysen by disembowelling her.
Kana, 21, pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder when he appeared in the Bredasdorp Magistrate’s Court on Monday.
The court, while not as full as it had been previously, was packed with family, friends and residents.
Kana, who had a slight build, wore a black and grey hooded sweatshirt with tan pants. He stood in the dock, tattooed arms crossed behind his back, while he listened to the proceedings.
Kana turned around a number of times to gesture and whisper to those in the rows behind him.
Kana had at first pleaded not guilty to both charges. It then emerged he had misunderstood and changed his plea.
Pieter du Toit, for the defence, read Kana’s version of events.
Kana said he was out drinking with friends on February 1 before going in the early hours of February 2 to a Bredasdorp bar.
He saw Booysen there.
“I was with my friends. She came to sit with me.”
Kana and Booysen walked from the bar towards her home and stopped to vry (kiss) each other.
She then pushed him away, but he pulled down her pants. She fell to the ground and her head. He then raped her. He also punched and kicked her.
“After I raped her, I ran away to my house.”
Kana said no one else had been involved in the incident.
The State recently dropped charges against Jonathan Davids, 22, after DNA forensic tests on semen and blood ruled him out as a suspect.
“Anene was alive when I left her and had no open wounds.”
Both had been under the influence of alcohol.
“I always knew that my actions were wrong, and that I could be punished by the State. Although I was under the influence of alcohol, I still knew what I was doing, and I acted deliberately.”
Kana apologised for what he had done.
Prosecutor Maria Marshall had read out details of the two charges which Kana faced.
The first was that Kana raped Booysen “with his penis, or other object unknown to the State, penetrated her vagina or anus without her permission”.
The murder charge was that Booysen died because of injuries sustained when he “pushed his hand, and or object unknown to the State, into her vagina or anus to pull her intestines out”.
Magistrate Graham Cupido postponed the case to July 9.
He said the director of public prosecution in the Western Cape, Rodney de Kock, would decide where the case would be held – in the regional or high court.
Booysen was found at a construction site in the Overberg town on February 2.
She was later taken to Tygerberg Hospital where she died after identifying one of her attackers as Zwai, which led to Davids’s arrest.
At the time of the attack it was said that Booysen’s abdomen had been slit and her fingers and legs broken.
It had since emerged that Booysen had not suffered any external injuries aside from those mentioned in the State’s charge sheet.
Kana’s family would not speak to the Cape Times on Monday. Booysen family members did not want to comment.
Nico September, Davids’s uncle, said his nephew was “coping” after his release.
“He’s taking it day by day. Still shaking. Some people still look at him.”
michelle.jones@inl.co.za
Cape Times