Seven years of murder and mayhem
Seven years of murder and mayhem, rape
and robbery, came to an end in a South African courtroom early in
December 2009 when notorious murderer, rapist and violent robber
Ananias Mathe was sentenced to an effective 54 years in maximum
security.
Judge Geraldine Borchers, in sentencing
Mathe in the Johannesburg High Court, said, “Rehabilitation cannot
take precedence because he is dangerous.”
He was taken away under exceptional
security to begin to serve his sentence in a maximum security prison
in the remote town of Kokstad in kwaZulu-Natal province.
Mathe’s reign of terror
Mathe, a 33-year-old Mozambican, began
his criminal reign of terror in 1999 when he began by violently
taking goods from people’s homes. He first raped a woman in June
2003, a 19-year-old Johannesburg resident. He was arrested and
mysteriously released, to continue his criminal activities.
He was arrested again in April 2004 in
Pretoria and after appearing in court was released on bail of R500
(less than US$100). In January 2005 he raped another woman in
Johannesburg, was arrested again, and this time escaped from a police
high risk facility.
Mathe was arrested again in November
2005 in connection with yet another rape. He was then detained in the
high-security C-Max prison in Pretoria, but again managed to escape,
apparently with inside help.
He was again arrested in December 2006
when he was found driving a stolen car.
Mathe was charged with a total of 64
counts, including seven of rape, four of attempted murder, 28 of
housebreaking, two charges of escaping from custody, and additional
counts of being in unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition,
theft and attempted theft. He was also charged with the killing of 11
dogs.
He was sentenced by Judge Borchers to a
total of 455 years in jail, with many of the sentences running
concurrently. In passing sentence the judge said, “It is my view
that the court should not impose hundreds of years because no human
being can live long enough to serve such sentences, and this makes a
mockery of the justice system.”
Because Mathe was regarded as such a
high escape risk he was taken from the court by helicopter to fetch
his belongings in Pretoria’s C-Max before being flown in a chartered
plane to his new prison home in Kokstad.
In Kokstad Maximum Security Prison
Mathe will be under 24-hour guard. He will only be eligible for
parole after 43 years, by which time he will be 76, and presumably no
longer a threat to society.
The rest of the story
Mathe became notorious and feared in
South Africa because of the viciousness of the crimes he committed
and his apparent lack of remorse.
As Judge Borchers said, if Mathe had
felt any remorse he would have pleaded guilty on all counts against
him.
Instead, she said, “He watched as the
State was obliged to call witnesses to testify against him. He
watched as the rape victims and their families testified in tears.
“Mathe did not testify in court to
express remorse on his own,” she concluded.
Mathe submitted a report by a clinical
psychologist in which he claimed that his childhood had been
disrupted by his joining the Mozambican Army during the civil war in
that country, but the judge did not entertain this as being evidence
of remorse.
Mathe’s father, Zephanias Mathe, 82,
has lived and worked in South Africa since 1957. He worked on the
mines until 1997 and had 11 children, all dead except for Ananias and
his brother Nitu. Mathe senior has 11 grandchildren, seven of them
Ananias’s.
The Sowetan newspaper sent a reporter
and a photographer to Mozambique to look up the family there. They
took the old man with them.
In Chicumbane they met Mathe’s wife
Felista and his children, as well as his brother Nitu who lost a leg
in a car crash in 2003.
The newspaper team also met a neighbour
of Mathe’s, Thomas Sithole who told them that Ananias had come to
South Africa in 1995. Both Sithole and Nitu said that Ananias had not
been involved with the army in Mozambique.
The family plans to try to get Mathe
sent back to Mozambique to serve his sentence there.
Crime and punishment
I find it difficult to feel any sadness
for Ananias Mathe. I think he has richly deserved the punishment of a
long, long time in jail. He is obviously a cruel, unfeeling person
with little understanding of the effect on others of what he has
done.
One of the women he raped was a virgin
before the incident. Others have left South Africa, unable to stay in
the country where they were violated.
One cannot but feel dreadfully sorry
for these victims. And, I admit, very angry at Mathe for his lack of
empathy, his heartlessness, his lack of feeling for others.
And most especially I feel angry and
sad that the children he has fathered are left behind in poverty,
some of them not ever having seen him. His wife is left to cope. That
is almost unforgivable.
I look at the photo of the children and
I just feel so angry that this man has done this to them.
Children deserve fathers who are kind
and gentle, who look after them and make sure that they have all they
need to get started in life. What chance do these beautiful young
people have now?
One can only hope that the African
philosophy of uBuntu will work, and that they will find comfort and
help in their extended family and be supported by their neighbours.
Surely Ananias Mathe deserves to be
punished, but do his wife and children also deserve punishment? I
don’t think so, but that’s what they are getting. This is yet another
African tragedy in the making.
Copyright Notice
The text and all images on this page, unless otherwise indicated, are by Tony McGregor
who hereby asserts his copyright on the material. Should you wish to
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©
Tony McGregor 2010
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