Suspect in South African student's murder killed in police shootout
The man had been linked to the death of Olorato Mongale, whose body was found in Johannesburg on Sunday, about two hours after she was reported missing having gone on a date.
In the early hours of Friday morning, police officers found the main suspect hiding at a residential complex in the coastal town of Amanzimtoti, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.
The suspect, who has not been named by the police, shot at the officers, who returned fire and killed him, Brigadier Mathe added.
Regional police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi said that at the time of the suspect's death, he had 28 ID cards and a dozen mobile phones in his possession.
Ms Mongale's death has sparked a fierce debate about the levels of violence faced by women in South Africa.
The country has one of the highest rates of femicide and gender-based violence in the world.
In an impassioned statement, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu called Ms Mongale's killing "inhumane" and "gruesome", adding: "To all men, this is a plea - simple, urgent, and human: Please, stop killing women."
While continuing the search for two other men allegedly linked to the murder, the police took the parents of the deceased suspect into custody.
The suspect's mother is accused of enabling him to "evade arrest" by tipping him off about the police's presence at her house.
The police also said the suspect's father is the owner of a VW Polo allegedly used in Ms Mongale's murder.
The vehicle, which has been seized by the police, had traces of blood inside it, Brig Mathe said.
The suspect's parents were questioned in custody but have now been released, said commissioner Mkhwanazi.
Earlier this week, the police named the three suspects linked to the killing as Fezile Ngubane, Philangenkosi Sibongokuhle Makhanya and Bongani Mthimkhulu.
Two of them — Makhanya and Mr Mthimkhulu — were last month arrested for kidnapping and robbing a woman in KwaZulu-Natal, using the same VW Polo involved in Ms Mongale's murder, police said. Both men had been freed on bail.
As part of their investigation into the killing, the police have identified a criminal gang or "syndicate" who have been targeting women in malls "for kidnapping and robbery", said police spokesperson Mathe.
"They propose them, request to take them out on a date. When they agree, that is when they plan to rob them," she added.
When Ms Mongale was last seen on Sunday, she was on a date with a man she had met a few days earlier at a shopping center.
CCTV footage showed her leaving a location in Kew, Johannesburg, and walking towards a white VW Polo with fake license plates.
The 30-year-old's friends said she was invited for a date by a man only identified as John, who she had met in Johannesburg, where she was studying for a postgraduate degree at Witwatersrand University.
She texted one of her friends shortly before leaving home, saying that she was excited and getting ready for her date.
But police later found her body in an open field, sparking public outrage and calls for justice.
Family spokesperson Criselda Kananda said Ms Mongale's body was "brutally violated".
A candlelight vigil was held on Wednesday evening in Lombardy West, at the site where her body was found.
Family and friends have described her as an outspoken, bubbly woman who "lived with purpose and love", local media reported. — BBC
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Saudi Gazette
16-06-2025
- Saudi Gazette
Safety fears force Cape Town parents to seek former white-only schools
CAPE TOWN — Fears of crime and gang violence in the notorious townships on the outskirts of the South African city of Cape Town are forcing some parents to make difficult decisions to send their children on long daily commutes to former white-only schools. "Thugs would go into the school carrying guns threatening teachers, forcefully taking their laptops in front of the learners," Sibahle Mbasana told the BBC about the school her sons used to attend in Khayelitsha, Cape Town's largest township. "Imagine your child experiencing this regularly. There's hardly any security at the school and even if there is, they are powerless to do anything." It is more than three decades since the end of white-minority rule in South Africa, but there are still black students who have to endure the vast inequalities that were the bedrock of the racist system of apartheid. Mrs Mbasana feels her three children are the inheritors of this legacy - particularly affecting her oldest son Lifalethu who was at a township school between the ages of six and 10. One of the apartheid era's main laws was the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which aimed to prevent black children from reaching their full potential. This created segregated schools with less funding and fewer resources for those in poor areas, which to this day are overcrowded and often suffer from the fallout of high crime, drug use and violence. Mrs Mbasana, who grew up in Eastern Cape province and moved to Khayelitsha when she was 18, decided she had no choice but to transfer Lifalethu, who is now 12, and her other son Anele, 11, to a state school some 40km (25 miles) away in Simon's Town, situated on a picturesque bay on the Cape Peninsula which is famously home to South Africa's navy. The boys have been joined by their seven-year-old sister Buhle at the school, which has better facilities and smaller class sizes. "I told myself [that] Buhle was not going to that [local] school because I already endured so many things with the two boys when they were at that school," said the 34-year-old clothes designer. She and her husband would love to move their family away from Khayelitsha completely. "We don't want to live in the township, but we have to live here because we can't afford to move out," she said. "Speak to anyone in the township and they'll tell you they would move out at the first opportunity if they could." There is no doubt that there are township schools, led by visionary principals and hard-working teachers, that have done wonders despite the obstacles of poor infrastructure and large class sizes. However, safety and security have proved insurmountable for some when, for example, gangs demand protection fees from teachers. The GroundUp news website has reported that teachers at Zanemfundo Primary School in Philippi East, close to Khayelitsha, were allegedly told to pay 10% of their salaries to the extortionists who seemed to operate with impunity. "It is not safe at all. We are in extreme danger," one teacher told GroundUp. "These gangs come to the school gun-wielding. Our lives are at risk. Teachers at the school are asking for transfers because they don't feel safe." According to the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), a private security company is now to be stationed at the school and the police are patrolling nearby. But similar incidents have reportedly taken place at five other schools in the surrounding areas of Nyanga, Philippi and Samora Machel. "My husband Sipho works in the navy in Simon's Town and he travels there so I thought it would be safer and more comfortable for my children to go to that school," said Mrs Mbasana. But longer commutes, often by bus or minibus taxi, to safer schools come with their own dangers and stresses. "My children get up at around 4.30am and leave at 5.50am when Sipho is transporting them. When they go by bus, because Sipho may be working elsewhere, they leave by 5.30 and they get home by 4.30 in the afternoon," said Mrs Mbasana. "They are always tired and want to sleep. They are strong because they do their homework, but they sleep much earlier than other kids would." Lifalethu made national headlines last year when there was a frantic search for him after he was forced to walk home from Simon's Town to Khayelitsha as the bus he regularly takes refused him entry as he could not find his ticket. The driver involved was subsequently suspended for contravening company policy, which requires employees to assist schoolchildren in uniform who have lost their tickets. With darkness falling, it was Mrs Mbasana's worst nightmare when Anele called to say his elder brother had not been allowed aboard. But a massive social media frenzy followed and by several strokes of good fortune he was found - at one stage the boy had been given a lift by a good Samaritan who dropped him off at a petrol station around 5km from his home. From there he was accompanied on foot by a security guard who lived in his area before being picked up and taken home to his relieved family by police officers who had joined the search for him. His case highlighted the plight of thousands of pupils from townships, some of whom do a round trip of up to 80km per day either on public transport or pre-arranged trips with minibus taxis to attend school in the city's suburban areas - which used to accept only white students in the apartheid era. Wealthier residents of these suburbs often opt for a private education for their offspring, meaning that the state schools there tend to have spaces for those coming from further afield. Donovan Williams, vice-principal of the state primary school in Cape Town's trendy Observatory district, says about 85% of his school's intake of around 830 students come from the townships - many of whom are exhausted by their long days. "Some parents work in the area while most spend lots of money on transport for their children to access schools with better infrastructure," he told the BBC. "Sometimes they fall asleep in class." According to Amnesty International, South Africa has one of the most unequal school systems in the world - with a child's outcome very much dependent on their place of birth, wealth and colour of their skin. "Children in the top 200 schools achieve more distinctions in mathematics than children in the next 6,600 schools combined. The playing field must be levelled," its 2020 report said. State schools are subsidised, but parents still have to pay school fees, which in the Western Cape can range from between $60 (£45) and $4,500 (£3,350) a year. Of the nearly 1,700 schools across the province, more than 100 are no-fee institutions as designated by the government for learners living in economically depressed areas. The province's education department explains that it often has to cover a shortfall in funding from the government - and schools in more middle-class areas turn to parents to cover the costs. Recently 2,407 teaching posts were lost in the province as the government allocated only 64% of the cost of the nationally negotiated wage agreement with teachers, the WCED said. The reduction in posts has meant that some contract teachers were not reappointed when their contracts ended in December, while some permanent teachers have been asked to move schools. "We are in an impossible position, and it is not of our making, and the Western Cape is not the only province affected," the WCED added. The National Professional Teachers' Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) says the decision has been particularly devastating for schools in impoverished and crime-ridden areas. "The schools that are feeling the real impact of this is your typical township school. They can't afford to replace those teachers with governing-body appointments, which is the case with the better-resourced schools where parents can afford to pay extra fees," Naptosa executive director Basil Manuel told the BBC. "They feel the cut, they will have the bigger class sizes, they will have the teachers that are more stressed out. "The children, especially those who are not too academically inclined, will slip through the cracks." Experts blame the continuing educational disparities on the debt the African National Congress (ANC) government of Nelson Mandela inherited in 1994 from the apartheid regime. "The ANC had to confront the fact that it couldn't deliver in the way it said it would," Aslam Fataar, research professor in higher education transformation at Stellenbosch University, told the BBC. Faced with fiscal austerity "poorer schools were never given a chance to develop a sustainable platform for teaching and learning", he said. "The political interest in what happens in the township schools has been lost 20 years ago. When it comes to teacher expenditure and pupil-teacher ratios you can see how that sector has been neglected. The numbers of teachers in those schools continues to bear the brunt of cuts." Prof Fataar is equally bleak about the future: "I can't see, bar a miracle, how we can increase the finances for poor schools." Parents like the Mbasanas, stuck in the townships and often at the mercy of gangs, have run out of patience. — BBC
Saudi Gazette
07-06-2025
- Saudi Gazette
US brings back El Salvador deportee to face charges
WASHINGTON — Kilmar Ábrego García, a 29-year-old from El Salvador mistakenly deported in March, has been returned to the US to face prosecution on two federal criminal charges. He has been accused of participating in a trafficking conspiracy over several years to move undocumented migrants from Texas to other parts of the country. El Salvador agreed to release Ábrego García after the US presented it with an arrest warrant, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday. His lawyer called the charges "preposterous". The White House had been resisting a US Supreme Court order from April to "facilitate" his return after he was sent to a jail in El Salvador alongside more than 250 other deportees. In a two-count grand jury indictment, filed in a Tennessee court last month and unsealed on Friday, Ábrego García was charged with one count of conspiracy to transport aliens and a second count of unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens. Bondi said the grand jury had found that Ábrego García had played a "significant role" in an alien smuggling ring, bringing in thousands of illegal immigrants to the US. The allegations, which date back to 2016, allege he transported undocumented individuals between Texas and Maryland and other states more than 100 times. The indictment additionally alleges he transported members of MS-13, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US. The Trump administration had previously alleged Ábrego García was a member of the transnational Salvadorian gang, which he has denied. Bondi also accused Ábrego García of trafficking weapons and narcotics into the US for the gang, though he was not charged with any related offenses. He appeared in court for an initial hearing on Friday in Nashville, Tennessee. An arraignment hearing is scheduled 13 June, where US Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes will determine if there are grounds to keep him detained ahead of his trial. For now, Ábrego García remains in federal custody. Ábrego García's lawyers have previously argued that he has never been convicted of any criminal offense, including gang membership, in the US or in El Salvador. Simon Sandoval Moshenberg, one of his attorneys, called the charges "preposterous" and the events an "abuse of power" at a Friday news conference. "The government disappeared Kilmar to a foreign prison in violation of a court order," Moshenberg said. "Now, after months of delay and secrecy, they're bringing him back, not to correct their error but to prosecute him." He added: "This is an abuse of power, not justice. The government should give him a full and fair trial in front of the same immigration judge who heard the case in 2019." Speaking to reporters on Friday, President Donald Trump called Ábrego García a "bad guy" and said the Department of Justice had made the right decision to return him to US soil to face trial. Ábrego García entered the US illegally as a teenager from El Salvador. In 2019, he was arrested with three other men in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities. But an immigration judge granted him protection from deportation on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from local gangs in his home country On 15 March, he was deported amid an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law that allows presidents to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy country. Ábrego García was taken to the Cecot mega-prison in El Salvador, known for its brutal conditions. While government lawyers initially said he was taken there as a result of "administrative error", the Trump administration refused to order his return. Whether or not the government had to "facilitate" his return to his home in the US state of Maryland became the subject of a weeks-long legal and political battle. After Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen demanded to see Ábrego García in El Salvador, he was released to a different prison in that country. On Friday, Van Hollen reiterated that "this is not about the man, it's about his constitutional rights - and the rights of all". "The administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along." El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a close ally of Trump, said on social media on Friday that if the administration "request the return of a gang member to face charges, of course we wouldn't refuse". Ábrego García is expected to make an initial appearance at a Tennessee court on Friday, where the US will request he be held in pretrial custody "because he poses a danger to the community and a serious risk of flight", according to the detention motion. — BBC
Saudi Gazette
31-05-2025
- Saudi Gazette
South African mother sentenced to life in prison for selling her daughter
CAPE TOWN — A South African woman has been sentenced to life in prison for selling her 6-year-old daughter, who remains missing more than a year after her disappearance, in a case that has shocked the nation. Kelly Smith, along with her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis and a friend, Steveno van Rhyn, were convicted of human trafficking and kidnapping and received life sentences for their roles in the crime. Each was also handed an additional 10-year sentence for kidnapping. The sentencing was delivered Thursday by Judge Nathan Erasmus at a sports center in the town of Saldanha Bay, northwest of Cape Town, where the trial had been relocated to accommodate local community members. Joshlin, Smith's daughter, vanished in February 2024. Her smiling photograph became a symbol of a nationwide search effort, initially prompting widespread sympathy for Smith. But the investigation took a dark turn when she and the two men were arrested. During the trial, a witness testified that Smith had confessed to selling her daughter to a traditional healer for approximately $1,000. The judge did not rule on the exact nature of the transaction or the buyer's identity but concluded that the child was trafficked for slavery or practices resembling slavery. Joshlin's whereabouts remain unknown, and the case continues to haunt the Saldanha Bay community. — Agencies
