Rhodes Memorial rapist handed 9 life sentences

The court described the terror that gripped women in Cape Town during 43-year-old Mthunzi Hlomane's four month raping spree.

Hlomane, who also used the name Patrick, attacked women between November 2015 and February 2016.

Living in bushes near the famous Rhodes Memorial, he attacked six young, vulnerable women who were jogging or walking on their own.

Five of the women were students. Each one was raped, some repeatedly and only one victim escaped without being raped.

"The absolute fear over which potential victims lived with on a day to day basis in Cape Town, its still in our memories", Acting Judge Mushtak Parker said before handing down the sentence.

At the time, UCT offered a reward of R100,000 for information leading to his arrest. The search for Hlomane finally ended when police arrested him in March.

Hlomane pleaded guilty to all the charges against him which included rape, kidnapping, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and robbery with aggravating circumstances.

The plea and sentence agreement revealed how the rapes were planned. Shortly before the attacks began, he had watched adult pornography on his cellphone.

"Particular to the scenes were the fact that in many the female performers had braids".

Hlomane admitted that "in some instances the complainants had a shared feature in that they had braids which played to his preference".

In the first incident, on November 19 last year, he slapped his victim, threatened her with a knife, stole her personal belongings and raped her.

He struck again less than a month later on December 10, again slapping his victim, threatening her at knife point and raping her repeatedly. He also stole her personal belongings which included her cellphone. He forced her to stay with him and tied her up.

On January 11, he found his fourth victim and subjected her to a similar sustained attack of repeated rapes at knife point.

Further attacks happened on January 25 and February 4. Each victim was also severely assaulted and suffered facial injuries after Hlomane punched and slapped them.

Armed with a knife, stick or rock "he would forcibly rob, assault and rape them".

The court found that the accused had targeted victims "fitting a certain profile" and that the rapes had happened over an extended period of time.

Hlomane "thus had ample time to reconsider his actions".

He also added to the humiliation of his victims by forcing them to walk naked and/or blindfolding them. He created the impression that he was photographing them with his cellphone, and threatened to post the photos on social media. He also forced them to tell him about their private lives.

Hlomane even used the cellphone of one of his victims to contact her after the incident, adding to her trauma.

One victim sustained serious injuries to her head, face and hands, including a dislocated jaw, and fainted after he manually strangled her.

In another incident, he forced his victim to draw money from an ATM and assaulted her so severely that she sustained serious injuries to her face and head after raping her several times.

In the plea and sentence agreement, Hlomane said he was "sincerely sorry" and apologised to his victims.

Acting Judge Mushtak Parker said he had contemplated allowing the victims to testify so that their voices could be heard, but he decided not to pursue this as they were satisfied with the agreement and wanted closure "sooner rather than later".

None of the victims were present in court.