South African gang rape victim dies after police negligence leads to alleged perpetrators' release

KPFA Evening News, 03.13.2013

Thandiswa Qubuda died in a Grahamstown, South Africa hospital on Thursday night, of injuries sustained six weeks earlier in a brutal gang rape. Ayanda Kota, a spokesperson for the South African Unemployed People's Movement of Grahamstown, told KPFA that it took the police three hours to arrive at the scene of the crime after it was reported, even though there's a police station barely a half mile away, and that a judge released the alleged gang rapists because police failed to gather sufficient evidence. Now that Thandiswa Qubuda has died, he said, a murder case has been opened.

The Unemployed People's Movement also issued a release saying that poor people cannot expect protection, only violence and oppression, from the South African Police.  

Earlier this week, bystanders captured cell phone video of police dragging a Mozambican taxi driver Mido Macia along the ground tied to the back of a police van.  Macia was left to die of unattended injuries in a jail cell.

For the Unemployed People's Movement release, see Thandiswa Qubuda has Died.