Many news bulletins and radio discussions about a distressing news item this week started with a warning to listeners travelling with children to turn down the volume because the content about to be discussed contained graphic detail.
The topic was the horrific murder of Benoni toddler Bokgabo Poo, 4, whose body was found days after she had been reported missing.
The little girl had been dismembered.
In a live radio interview on Thursday, Bokgabo’s father, Irvin Ndlovu, described the family’s nightmare, starting with their daughter’s disappearance and then the chilling discovery of her body.
He broke down as he recalled how community members thought they had found her body — under sand with only a leg sticking out — only to realise it was just her leg.
They then heard children calling out that dogs were scratching at what appeared to be a body.
The authorities were summoned, DNA tests were ordered and Bokgabo’s family identified her from a missing tooth and a birthmark on her chest.
She had been so badly mutilated that a distraught Ndlovu battled to describe what he encountered at the mortuary.
“What I saw there... I hoped that my daughter was lying dead somewhere [else] because I didn’t want it to be her.”
Ntokozo Zikhale has since been arrested and has appeared in court.
He is accused of kidnapping, rape, murder, defeating the ends of justice and violation of a corpse.
Tragically, Bokgabo was not the first child to be mutilated, dismembered and murdered this year.
In May, the dismembered body of a toddler was stuffed in a sports bag and dumped on the N1 near a Shell Ultra City petrol station south of Polokwane.
In August, two grade 12 girls were hacked to death before their bodies were dismembered on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast.
These deaths have raised an important question, simply put on the front page of Weekend Post’s sister publication Sowetan this week: “How many more must die?”
Our children are being kidnapped. Our children are being raped.
Our children are dying the most horrific, painful, deaths — at the hands of people who live among us.
What has gone wrong that we are witnessing such heinous attacks on innocent, defenceless children?
It is a question we need to address as a nation if we are to get to the root of these murders and ultimately put an end to them.
