Partners often take the lives of those they claim to love because they cannot accept rejection, according to Indra Goberdan, Eastern Cape deputy director of public prosecutions.
Goberdan was one of the panelists at the launch of Eastern Cape safety strategy in East London, where different kinds of crime were discussed.
She said rejection, extramarital relationships and substance abuse are among the reasons many partners take the lives of those they claim to love, noting that children not born of these couples also end up getting killed when relationships go sour.
“The last few cases that we’ve been experiencing involve a scorned lover, so to speak. The idea now is not to attack the partner, but kill a child. We’ve had quite a few of those cases,” Goberdan said.
She made an example of a 25-year-old woman who killed the child of her partner because the partner was not keen to have another child.
“We also had another one recently where the woman moved on with another boyfriend and the scorned lover decided to murder her nine-year-old boy to make her feel the pain of rejection.”
Eastern Cape community safety MEC Xolile Nqatha said the safety strategy is designed to bring all the stakeholders together including communities, the police, the National Prosecuting Authority, social development and non-government organisations in tackling the high levels of crime.
“We are going to intensify our integrated approach using intelligence driven to fight crime, so that the intelligence information can help us to get the culprits and kingpins,” said Nqatha.
“Public and community participation is quite central to our approach because all these criminals are known in the communities.”
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