Pretoria - Seven life terms and 83 years imprisonment – that is the sentence meted out to the graveyard serial rapist this week.
Elvis Aaron Zulu, 40, from Pienaar, in Mpumalanga, was convicted on 22 counts, ranging from nine counts of rape, six of kidnapping, three of robbery with aggravating circumstances, three of pointing a firearm and one of possession of an unlicensed firearm.
Zulu carried out a reign of terror between January 2011 and November 2014, in Pienaar, KaBokweni, next to the Kruger National Park.
The court earlier heard the chilling accounts of his victims. After raping them, he invited members of his gang to also rape them.
He especially had a preference for raping young virgins in a graveyard next to a school. One testified about her rape ordeal on a tombstone.
Monica Nyuswa, National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson for Mpumalanga, said Judge Takalane Ratshivhumo concluded that a lifetime in jail was the only sentence applicable as Zulu failed to show any remorse.
Apart from being declared unfit to possess a firearm, the judge further ordered Zulu’s name to be entered into the National Register for Sex Offenders and declared him unfit to work with children.
Zulu targeted his victims at gunpoint while they were walking in the street or waiting for a taxi and took them to a nearby house and raped them. He also took some of his victims to a nearby graveyard, where he and sometimes other members of his gang, raped and robbed them of their belongings like cellphones and cash.
In one case, a teenage virgin was accosted by Zulu and his gang and dragged to a graveyard at gunpoint. She was forced to undress and lie on the grave, and raped while they used a tombstone as a bed.
Zulu’s raping spree came to light in November 2014 after he and his unknown accomplices accosted another victim at Pienaar.
They took a victim’s cellphone and dragged her to Hope of the Nations Ministry Church and took turns raping her. The accused was arrested after one of the victims was able to identify him to the police. Swabs were taken, which positively linked him with other rape cases.
All but one victim testified about the “faceless” man who had raped them as they could not identify him.
Zulu pleaded not guilty and claimed consent from the victim who identified him. While he denied meeting the others, he could not explain how his semen, positively linked to him via DNA evidence, was found on them.
His only defence was that it was a set up as the police were desperate to catch the rapist. But the judge said DNA never lies.
During the opening speech of his judgment, the judge said from around 2008 it became too risky to walk alone, especially in the dark or in secluded paths near the Kruger Park.
The judge said that it, however, was not the Big Five having escaped from the game reserve that they feared, but the (then) faceless man who roamed the streets, looking for women to rape.
Director of Public Prosecutions advocate Nkebe Kanyane welcomed the sentence and commended the the prosecution and the police in securing this conviction.
Pretoria News