More women will sleep peacefully after the high court in Johannesburg put another serial rapist behind bars.
Thabang Victor Rampai, who was dubbed the graveyard rapist, was on Tuesday sentenced to four life terms and 15 years imprisonment.
Rampai’s raping spree, which he committed at the Roodepoort cemetery in Johannesburg, stretched from May 2016 until his arrest in March 2018.
The thirty-two-year-old Rampai targeted women who visited the graves of their loved ones with an intention to clean them.
In an incident on March 10 2018, one of his victims was cleaning her late husband’s grave when he grabbed her from behind, stabbed her, raped her and fled with her cellphone.
State advocate Makwena Mokwatedi argued that the accused pleaded guilty to all the charges, saying the evidence was overwhelming.
She added that the accused could not dispute the DNA evidence linking him to all previously unsolved cases of women robbed and raped at the graveyard.
Mokwatedi further pleaded with the court not to allow perpetrators such as the offender to create an environment of terror and insecurity in society.
Judge Cassim Ismail Moosa ordered that the accused’s name be entered into the national register for sex offenders. He is also deemed unfit to possess a firearm.
Rampai was convicted on six counts of rape, two counts of robbery with aggravating circumstances, a count of assault with intent to do grievous body harm, and a count of attempted murder.
A 15-year life sentence was added to the life terms.
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