S.African orphan, 12, fights like a tigress against vicious attack gang

The aggressive gang subjected the family to a rape and torture-ordeal lasting hours… yet they only looted R1,000 in cash and some cheap cellphones…

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WELKOM. DOORN SMALLHOLDINGS –August 7 2010 - ’A twelve-year-old orphan girl who lives with her grandparents inside their homestead/tuck shop, fought like a tigress against an attack gang on Thursday night – and undoubtedly saved their lives, reports Volksblad journalist Tom de Wet.

The family name is not published to protect the identity of the aunt, who was gang-raped by the attackers. The SAPS and emergency services initially reported that the child had also been raped – however instead she was drugged by the gang after she had put up such a fierce fight.

The girl, her brother, 4 and sister, 2, are now in a place of safety where they are being treated for trauma and her grandparents are in hospital with multiple injuries caused by beatings and panga-attacks. Police have confiscated a powdery substance used to drug the child with.

The family’s hours of hell started on Thursday-evening when at least three men, armed with a firearm, a panga and metal pipes, broke into the family’s grocery shop, which is inside their house. The grandparents pleaded with the attackers to not injure them and the children – but the grandfather was tied up and brutally assaulted, and the grandmother pistol-whipped: SAPS spokesman Capt Stephen Thakeng said that while the attackers were inside the house the aunt, 25, and her friend had arrived from North West and ran right into the gang – the male friend was attacked with a panga and the aunt was forced into a room where she was gang-raped. The girl flew into a rage and assaulted the rapists, trying to drag them off the woman. She was side-handed and also was cut on a hand – but she kept on assaulting the men. The girl fought like a tigress to save her family: dragging her grandfather where he lay in a puddle of blood after he was hacked with a panga – covering up the injured old man with a blanket before she grabbed a kitchen-knife and storming towards the attackers again.

SAPS spokesman Capt Stephen Thakeng, said the gang’s loot – after all this trouble and inflicting so much pain and trauma on the family – was a mere R1,000 (about $80 US) in cash, some cellphones and the grandparent’s older-model car – which wasn’t ‘robbed’ but merely ‘borrowed’ as it was later found abandoned alongside a school in Thabong township by SAPS warrant-officer David Scott from the Free State’s K9 squad. The SAPS may be contacted about this matter via Capt Elmarie van der Merwe at 082-301-3075.