A 66-year-old man was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Dzanani Regional Court last Thursday for raping his two biological daughters.

The court heard that the father started raping the eldest daughter at their home in Siloam in 2005, when she was still only 12 years old. He impregnated his firstborn daughter in 2006 and 2008 and two children were born. The sex-crazy father would accompany the daughters to fetch firewood in the nearby mountain, where he would rape them.

Police Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi of the Limpopo Police said police investigations revealed that he would also send the mother away, so that he could rape the children. He said after school he would wait for them at the gate to ensure that they did not have friends. "The rape ordeal was discovered by a local sangoma whom the victim consulted after experiencing vaginal pains. The sangoma, after realising that the girl had been sexually abused, recommended that the matter be reported to the police."

"The father did his best to threaten the daughters that he would kill both of them if they reported the matter to the police, but on May 2012, seven years after the ordeal started, the matter was brought to the attention of the police by concerned residents and the father was subsequently arrested," said Mulaudzi.

Limpopo Provincial Commissioner Lieutenant General Simon Mpembe, who visited the family in June 2012, expressed his happiness after hearing about the stiff sentence. He said justice was served, but he also expressed the wish that those who knew about the rape ordeal would have reported the matter earlier. “When we went there last year, I promised the family and the victims that we would do everything in our power to ensure that the father does not come back to haunt the girls again. I am happy he will rot in jail for his sins and this sentence must serve as a warning to other wannabe rapists that we mean business and we are geared up to root this stigma out of our province,” Mpembe said.