The Eastern Cape deputy director of Public Prosecution Indra Goberdan says partners often take the lives of those they claim to love because they can’t accept rejection.
Goberdan was among panellists who were discussing various crimes during the launch of the Eastern Cape safety strategy in East London.
She said rejection, extra marital relationships and substance abuse were among the reasons many partners took the lives of those they claimed to love.
Goberdan said there was also an increase in cases where children not born from the same couple ended up being killed when relationships went sour.
“The last few cases that we’ve been experiencing, we have seen the scorned lover, so to speak, having the idea not to attack the partner but kill a child. We’ve had quite a few of those cases in Port Elizabeth,” said Goberdan.
She gave the example of a case of a 25-year-old woman who killed the child of her partner because the partner was not keen on having another child when she wanted one with him.
Goberdan said: “We also had another one recently where the mother of the deceased had moved on with another boyfriend and the scorned lover decided that the only way to get back at her, to make her feel the pain he felt from rejection, was to murder her nine-year-old little boy.”
Eastern Cape community safety MEC Xolile Nqatha said the strategy was designed to bring stakeholders like communities, the police, the NPA, social development and NGOs together to tackle crime.
“We are going to intensify our integrated approach, using intelligence-driven methods to fight crime so that the intelligence information can help us to get the culprits and kingpins.
“Public and community participation is central to our approach because all these criminals are known in the communities,” said Nqatha.
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