A 55-year-old Butterworth taxi driver has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2019 rape of a 19-year-old hitchhiker.
Sindile Lennox Somdaka and two others repeatedly raped the victim for three days while chained to a steel bed at his homestead in Mission Location in May 2019.
This, was after they covered her with a cloth and abducted her while hiking to her home in a nearby village.
She finally escaped her captors while transporting her to a nearby forest to be killed.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Luxolo Tyali says the victim ran to the rescue of Msobumvu Township residents, subsequently leading to the arrest of the taxi driver at the rank.
Tyali says during the trial, Somdaka claimed to have been in a romantic relationship with the victim, but under cross-examination, he started to contradict himself and also would not give up the names of his accomplices.
The Butterworth Regional Court has sentenced Somdaka to three years for kidnapping and 12 months for assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, with the latter sentences ordered to run concurrently with the life sentence.
