By Melanie Nathan, July 22, 2015.
After sloppy police work, as alleged by the organization IRANTI, the trial against Thabo Molefe, charged with the murder of Thembelihle Sokhela, a lesbian from Daveyton, will finally be heard at the Pretoria High Court on Monday July 27.
Lihle was a 28-year old lesbian from Daveyton, murdered on 14 September 2014. She was found wrapped in a blanket and behind the accused’s bed. Molefe, a convicted rapist, apparently knew Lihle, a neighbor.
The case was reported by Mamba Online as follows:
South Africa’s LGBTI community remains under siege. Another lesbian woman has been raped and murdered in an apparent hate crime in Daveyton, Ekurhuleni, outside of Johannesburg.
According to activists, the body of Thembelihle ‘Lihle’ Sokhela, believed to be in her late 20s, was found in her alleged killer’s room on Tuesday, two days after she’d been reported missing.
It’s suspected that she was raped. Her head had been bashed against the wall, she’d been suffocated with a pillow and was wrapped in a blanket next to the bed. Her body was only discovered after a smell was noticed emanating from the room.
A suspect reportedly handed himself in to police. He appeared in the Benoni Magistrates’ Court on Thursday on a charge of pre-meditated murder.
Human rights defender Sybil Nandi Ezane, who attended the court appearance, told Mambaonline that prosecutors revealed that the 45-year-old accused was on parole after recently being released from prison for another rape and murder.
Ezane said Daveyton police informed her that results from forensic tests were required to confirm if Sokhela had been raped. READ MORE
Another South African Lesbian Murdered in Daveyton as Known Rapist Turns Himself In
By Melanie Nathan, September 17, 2014. Distraught South African LGBTQI community is reporting another murder of a lesbian, Thembelihle, described by friends as a butch lesbian who lived at Sgodi Phola Section in Daveyton, a South African Township in the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality of Gauteng. Affectionately known as Lihle by her friends, she was last […] READ MORE
More Articles on so called “corrective rape” on Oblogdee found here
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