By Nicholas Stix
If a stranger approached me on the street, accusing me of having raped his daughter and infected her with HIV, I would immediately run away, while shouting over my shoulder, “No, I didn’t!”
I wouldn’t need to know who his daughter was because, except for in the feminist sense in which all heterosexual sex entails a man raping a woman, I’ve never raped anyone.
Not so in South Africa, where 25 percent of black males polled admitted to having committed rape, and which has one of the world’s highest rates of rape, HIV infection, and full-blown AIDS. You’d think that a rapist with any sense would also immediately run away, shouting “No, I didn’t!”
Apparently, 27-year-old Khangelani Mdluli is a thoughtful sort of rapist, er, chap, and needed time to ruminate over the accusation.
And so it was, when a 34-year-old, black former professional rugby player’s daughter told him she’d been gang-raped and infected with HIV, he started hacking the men she’d identified to death with an ax, killing three (perhaps four), one of whom, Ndodo Hlongwa, he decapitated. Khangelani Mdluli and Siyanda Khumalo got away. Mdluli recounted his brush with mortality.
Mdluli told the Cape Argus newspaper that he was walking in the suburb of Lamontville last week when a car drove past him slowly.
The driver turned into a driveway, made a three-point turn and drove up behind Mdluli. "He stopped the car, jumped out with an orange plastic bag and walked down the road towards me," Mdluli was quoted as saying by the paper. "I continued walking but I looked at the plastic bag. He said to me: 'Did you know we would ever meet?' "
The man then allegedly accused him of being a rapist, telling him: You think I'm stupid. You infected my daughter with HIV."
Mdluli told the Cape Argus that he asked the man, who was looking agitated, who his daughter was, but the man pulled an axe out of the bag.
"As the axe came down towards my head, I ducked and it scratched my stomach. I started running down the road as he followed me and swore at me. He eventually gave up and turned back to head to his car, which was parked up the road."
Just when Mdluli thought he was safe, he spotted the man driving along another road. "We looked at each other. I ran back and looked for back routes to get home, making it difficult for him to follow me because he was driving. I went straight home and got into bed."…
[“Mystery rugby player in Pretoria arrested over decapitation; Victim who survived another alleged attack says the suspect told him he was seeking revenge for his daughter's rape,” by David Smith, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 March, 2011, 21.33 BST.]
In case you were wondering, whenever I escape someone trying to hack me to death with an ax, I always go straight home, and jump into bed!
By the way, note the Daily Mail’s unwittingly comical take on the crime:
Meanwhile some fear the tragedy could create fresh fissures in South Africa's fragile race relations.
The vast majority of South African rugby stars are white and it is possible the suspect could be accused of deliberately targeting black victims.
[“Ex-South Africa rugby star 'murders at least three people with an axe in revenge for gang-rape of his daughter,'” by Stewart Maclean, the Daily Mail, last updated at 3:33 PM, on 30th March 2011.]
We wouldn’t want anyone to think that white South Africans were deliberately targeting black victims!
A tip ‘o the hat to Lawrence Auster.
According to today's (Friday) London Daily Mail, the accused rugby player, Joseph Ntshongwana, does not have a daughter. His attorney will make an application that his client is mentally unfit to stand trial.
ReplyDeleteDavid In TN