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In a horrific development, a 12-year-old girl was sjamboked to death by her angry parents, following rumours that she had been seen kissing a boy in the streets. The shocking incident occured in South Africa on Tuesday.
According to the Sowetan, Nthaisi Bembe, 12, was out with her friends when the angry parents summoned her back home to Lehae, south of Johannesburg.
When she got home, her mother Miriam Bembe, 35, and her live-in lover Raymond Sekgapane, 42, informed her that they had learned on good authority that she had been “seen kissing a boy in the street.”
The angry parents are alleged to have sjamboked Nthaisi mercilessly for 30 minutes. After the brutal beating, Nthaisi dragged herself to the bathroom to clean off the blood that she was now covered in. Unfortunately, she collapsed and died in there.
On Friday, the two parents made their first appearance at Lenasia regional court facing a charge of murder.
Prosecutor Tumelo Maunye told the court that the parents had been triggered when someone told them that the Lehae Primary School Grade 7 pupil had been spotted kissing a boy.
“The parents got angry and called her to come home. For about 30 minutes, they beat her with a sjambok. She then went to the bathroom and moments later, they found her lying there, dead. It’s a complicated matter that can be solved by a postmortem,”
Presiding Magistrate Maggie van der Merwe agreed that the matter should be postponed to allow a post-mortem on Nthaisi’s body to be carried out so that the cause of death can be established.
“This case is not about what we see with our eyes, it’s very complicated. She was allegedly beaten for kissing a boy and now she is dead. The postmortem and other evidence will guide the police and the prosecutor on how we proceed. Unfortunately, I cannot make a decision right now.”
In South Africa, corporal punishment is banned. The Constitutional Court made a ground-breaking ruling that upheld a high court judgement that effectively does away with the common law defence of reasonable chastisement when spanking a child in September last year.
