Deprivation may have triggered a young man’s initial descent into less serious crimes as a teen, but that did not diminish the severity of the brutal rape and murder of a 95-year-old Uitenhage woman.
This was said by judge Dayalin Chetty, who jailed Phumzile Mabope, 19, for 25 years on Thursday. The teenager had earlier pleaded guilty.
Handing down sentence in the Port Elizabeth High Court, Chetty said the rape and murder of Maria Vermaak in her Luyt Street home on February 24 2017 was inexcusable.
“Such socially deviant behaviour can never be attributed to a deprived social economic background and cannot be countenanced,” Chetty said.
Mabope committed the first of seven offences of housebreaking with intent to steal and rob in December 2014 at the age of 16 and, before the murder of Vermaak, had committed no fewer than nine crimes.
A social worker’s report handed in during presentencing proceedings showed that Mabope had a number of brushes with the law during his younger years after he and his siblings were abandoned to look after themselves by their alcoholic parents.
“I have no doubt that the accused’s initial [descent] into crimes of theft and housebreaking with intent to steal was actuated by the deprivation experienced in his household,” Chetty said.
Finding that Mabope’s crimes prior to December 2014 were committed out of necessity, Chetty said this did not diminish the gravity and severity of the crimes he had been convicted of in August.
“In his plea explanation, he acknowledged breaking into a multitude of premises and stealing goods of substantial values,” Chetty said.
“Those offences, delineated in the indictment, were, on the probabilities, clearly not fuelled by hunger but by an appetite to appropriate items of value to feed his drug and alcohol dependency.”
Victim impact reports along with presentencing statements sealed Mabope’s fate.
Chetty found all the complainants as well as their families suffered significantly.
“Some of them have been forced to relocate to safer pastures while others continue to suffer the trauma of the violation of their homes,” the judge said.
The murder and rape of Vermaak, Chetty said, could not be excused by Mabope’s socioeconomic background.
“The one inexcusable feature of this case, however, is the indescribable horror of what befell Mrs Vermaak.”
After Mabope was convicted on August 21, his legal representative, advocate Jodine Coertzen, asked the court to consider sentencing Mabope in terms of the Child Justice Act, which calls for a sentence of direct imprisonment of no more than 25 years.
Mabope was sentenced under the act as he had committed the crimes between the ages of 16 and 17.