Africa-Press – South-Africa. A man applied for leave to appeal a life sentence for raping an 11-year-old girl by claiming her father had given her to him as a wife.
Chifondo Austin also tried to convince the court that he thought the child was 15 because her father told him so.
In his appeal, the Malawi national told the Western Cape High Court that his culture allowed a girl as young as 15 to get married and that he and the girl were like “love birds” when she moved into his shack in Langa, Cape Town.
When she fell pregnant, he said he broke the “good news” to her father.
But in the privacy of the shack, he threatened to throw the girl into a river if she ever told anybody what he was doing to her.
The girl’s terrible secret was only discovered when her stomach started swelling after the rapes in 2016, up to 2017.
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| Father did not know sex with his daughter was unlawful, court hears
In its judgment, handed down on 12 September, the court noted that when people noticed her stomach was swelling, a pregnancy test was done. She was seven months pregnant.
She gave birth to a boy at significant risk to her own life, because she bled so profusely during the delivery that she had to stay in hospital for a week.
A DNA test proved a 99% chance that her father’s friend was the father.
The judgment read:
The Parow Regional Court found the man guilty of rape, and because the girl was only 11, he was handed a life sentence. His name will be added to the Register for Sex Offenders.
The court explained that the girl was born in Malawi and brought to live with her father in Cape Town. Her mother stayed behind in Malawi. She never went to school.
She and her father shared a cramped shack in Joe Slovo, Langa. It was so small for them that her father asked his neighbour if she could stay in the spare room in his shack.
This room was full of tyres and other items, but at least the father and daughter would have more space.
Her father’s neighbour started raping her when she moved in, and then calmly shared dinner with her and her father at night as though nothing had happened.
She was also expected to cook, clean the shack, and do his laundry.
When her pregnancy was discovered, her father wept. The surrounding community was also enraged and ordered that the man be fetched from work to answer questions.
The security guard at his workplace called him, and he was bundled into a car and taken to Langa.
Things became very violent as he was beaten severely. The girl’s father eventually ran to fetch the police because he did not want the man to be murdered.
During his appeal, the rapist insisted that he thought the girl was 15, and that her father had given her to him as a bride.
However, the Western Cape High Court found no fault with the Parow conviction and life sentence.
“How the appellant, who was more than 25 years old at the time, and according to him, was living with this 11-year-old child as husband and wife on a permanent basis, could have thought that she had the mental maturity and capacity to consent to sexual intercourse is beyond comprehension,” the court found.
“He has not expressed any remorse for his actions.”
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