Graveyard rapist ‘worse than animals’

VIRGIN girls were gang-raped on a graveyard tombstone next to a school and their attacker made them pray afterwards.

The victims had to relive the horrific events in the Mbombela High Court in Mpumalanga. On Wednesday, the court convicted Elvis Zulu on 22 charges, most of them rape.

While Zulu ran a reign of terror across villages next to the Kruger National Park for more than 10 years, he remained a faceless attacker to nearly all his seven victims who could not identify him.

He was eventually caught after one of his victims recognised him.

But while Zulu denied the allegations, he was linked to all the victims via DNA evidence.

Judge Takalani Ratshibvumo said in his ruling that DNA never lied.

In the opening to his judgment, he said that for almost a decade, fear gripped the residents of Pienaar, Kabokweni and Kanyamazane villages just outside the Kruger.

“From around 2008, it became too risky to walk alone, especially in the dark or in secluded paths. It was the kind of panic the inhabitants of these areas are too familiar with, especially during the times when dangerous animals would have escaped the neighbouring Kruger.”

The judge said it was, however, not any of the Big Five animals having escaped from the game reserve that they feared.

“It was a normal human being, or perhaps not so normal as he seemed to have lost his humanness, that they feared. A mere mention of what he was capable of would send shivers down the spine of all who lived in the area.”

The court was told that once Zulu had captured his victims, they were stabbed with a knife, hit with bottles and threatened with being shot to subdue them.

He operated in gangs of two or three. Women would be robbed of their belongings, sexually violated as they screamed. Tombstones in the graveyards would be used as his bed upon which girls were forced to lose their virginity while he gratified his sexual desires without using a condom.

He invited members of his gang to also “enjoy themselves”, and left the victims with permanent psychological wounds.

Most of the victims had the same ordeal to tell; they were overpowered by Zulu and his gang and taken to a deserted house of the graveyard where they were subjected to a nightmare ordeal. He was always armed with a firearm and his gang with knives.

Only Zulu was arrested. He is due to be sentenced later this month.