On Sunday it will be a year since 17-year-old Anene Booysen was raped, disembowelled and died in Bredasdorp.
|||Cape Town - On Sunday it will be a year since 17-year-old Anene Booysen was raped, disembowelled and died in Bredasdorp.
Her death shocked South Africans and the international community.
Anene was found, with her intestines protruding from her genitals, on a construction site early on February 2.
This weekend memorial services are expected to take place in her home town, Bredasdorp.
Sam van Staden, spokesman for the Cape Agulhas Churches Forum, said the murder remained fresh in residents’ minds.
“It is still fresh in our minds and it will never go away,” he said.
Van Staden said church leaders planned to hold a memorial service each year on the anniversary of Anene’s death.
“We are doing this to show that we haven’t forgotten Anene or her family.”
Family, friends, residents as well as the mayor and deputy mayor of the Cape Agulhas Municipality are expected to attend.
Van Staden said
a neighbourhood watch had been set up to monitor streets at night.
“We want to make sure that there will never be a crime in Bredasdorp such as (that of) Anene Booysen.”
Kathleen Dey, director of Rape Crisis, said the number of reported cases of rape did not accurately reflect how many occurred.
“Only a fraction of rape is reported to police. If you look at police reports, it’s not an indicator of whether it has increased or decreased.”
Dey said Rape Crisis had spent time last month in Bredasdorp, which lacked resources.
“Alcohol and substance abuse, rape and poverty continue.”
The government did not provide enough resources.
“They have resources, but cluster them in urban areas, and this does not help communities like Bredasdorp,” Dey said.
She added that programmes were not preventing rape.
“One of those mysteries of the human condition is that we don’t know why people rape,” Dey said.
Johannes Kana, 22, who was convicted of raping and murdering Anene, is petitioning for leave to appeal against his sentence of two life terms. He was sentenced in November.
His attorney, Pieter du Toit, said an application for leave to appeal had been refused.
“We have petitioned the judge president to make a decision.”
Cape Argus