BELINDA 'BOO' THE SERIAL RAPIST SURVIVOR

My wife Gayle and I were living in Johannesburg when our daughter Belinda Abbott attended St Teresa’s School there. It was more commonly known as Rosebank Convent and she was in her late teens, fresh out of the convent in 1998, when we organised for her to go to the Natal Technikon in Durban because it had such a good reputation for teaching Clothing Design.

            This was something Belinda had always wanted to do from when she was a little girl. And in her last school year she even designed and made her own dress for the matric dance.

            We bought a two bedroomed flat for her not far from the Tech in Durban with the idea that she would get a companion to share it with her.  But when she initially got there she hadn’t had time to find somebody when it happened.

            Belinda was woken in the middle of the night by an Indian in his underpants standing next to her bed. He told her he had come to help her. She immediately started spraying him with the mace spray I had given her for just such an occasion. It was a particularly large one which enabled her to keep spraying him as he ran through the flat and out of the window he had come in through.

            When I went down to Durban to comfort her it was clear that the intruder had spent some time in the first floor flat before he had come into Belinda’s bedroom. Like a wild animal marking its territory he had left his calling card under quite few of the cushions in the lounge.

            At the time Belinda had no way of knowing that she had escaped unscathed from a physical point of view from what turned out to be possibly South Africa’s most prolific serial rapist. But the mental scars of such a horrendous experience will be with her for the rest of her life.

            “I didn’t sleep for two years after that,” she told me. But this did not stop her excelling at her studies during her three year course at the Tech. Shortly after this terrifying experience one of the local papers carried a picture of a boyish looking Andrew Mohammed, who had escaped from the CR Swart police cells there while waiting to appear at an identity parade. And when I showed Belinda his picture in the paper she identified him as the man who had been in her flat.

            In spite of her terrifying experience she still completed her National Diploma in Clothing Design cum laude top of the class of about 40 students at the Tech. She was also a finalist in the Du Pont Fashion Awards in which there were 79 entries from two competing Technikons. And now 30 years later she runs her own successful fashion house Once Was that she founded in Melbourne, Australia. It is hardly surprising that the last place that she wanted to built her career was in South Africa where she was born.

            The 30 year old Mahomed said at one stage he “just walked out” of the Police station in Durban. The cops were clearly not paying attention to one of their most notorious sex offenders. He was facing a variety of sex crimes and armed robbery. Within a few days he continued to terrorise young white women in Pretoria half the country away. He also stole cars from some of them, which he sold through a contact.                                                   

            It took the Pretoria police to do what the ones in Durban had failed so dismally to do. In the Commercial Crimes Court there he was sentenced to an effective 177 years in jail. This meant his sentence was only for part of what he had done because, as he got such a huge jail term there it was considered pointless to try him again for his similar crime spree in the Durban area.  He held up some of his victims with a gun before raping or sexually assaulting them. The only plus about Belinda’s experience was that when he got into her flat he had evidently not yet been able to obtain a gun.

            He was sentenced after he pleaded guilty to 23 charges of rape, attempted rape, indecent assault, armed robbery and the illegal possession of a fire arm. All but two of his victims were aged between 18 and 30. 

            He even forced some of his victims to have oral sex with him.

            The Police forensic psychologist Captain Lynne Evans told the court that because of the number of cases and the physical violence involved there was a possibility he would have ended up murdering somebody if he had not been caught.

            Pleading for a second chance Mahomed told the court, “I have a wife and child to support and if my wife knew I was a serial rapist she would have divorced me long ago.” If his wife hadn’t  known she must have been in another world.

            Belinda had a friend move into the flat shortly after the incident so she was not longer all on her own there.

            A former Northern Transvaal gymnast was just 19 when she was severely injured when she jumped out of a two story window after being raped by Mohamed. She subsequent successfully claimed damages of R5 million from the State for the negligence of the Police in letting Mohamed escape after he was first arrested in Durban.

            The humpty dumpty legal system is such that Mahomed's sentence was changed to an "indefinate term of imprisonment" which meant he had to return to court to be "resentenced" every 15 years. This has already been done once with one side labeling him a"manipulative psychopath" and his defence making the ridiculous claim that he had a "clean prison record" and should be released. But he did not succeed in getting his freedom so both sides will be repeating the arguments when the current 15 period comes to an end.

            It's deplorable the way the State is treating Mahomed as though he was wronged when he devastated the lives of so many women.                  

                                                                    

IF PEOPLE HAVE NINE LIVES LIKE CATS, HOW MANY HAVE YOU USED? HERE ARE MINE.

 Dear Cat Lovers,

            I used the first of my nine lives as a teenager when I was living in Cape Town.I got tuberculosis at a time when the cure was nothing like it is today. It was not uncommon for both children and grown ups to die from it. I was in bed for six months and I also had a spell in the TB hospital at Nouport that was in the arid Karroo because the medical boffins believed that the dry climate there was best for people with their lungs being destroyed by the disease.

            I had only just recovered from TB when I embarked on the greatest trip of my life – crisscrossing Africa hitch-hiking alone from Cape Town to Tunis. I had only just left South Africa when I got a lift with a guy in a little old M.G. There can’t be many cars so unsuitable for river crossings because they are so low. He and his friend were both driving more or less identical vehicles and I was in the front one when we came to this river in Rhodesia which was in flood.

            The bridge was almost completely under water, but this did not deter the driver I was with. We spent the next 15 minutes or so wondering when we were going to be swept away as the little car battled against the current with the river running right through it across the floor from one side to the other.  

                

 

             This is what the bridge looked like when two of us crossed it in this MG. Miraculously we made it and we had to wait two days for my driver’s friend to join us. He had done the sensible thing and only crossed when the river had gone down sufficiently for this to be safe.

              I tested the vulnerability of my lives once more on my year long safari through Africa. It’s hard to imagine that I could have been so stupid as to buy a dugout canoe from one of the locals on the Congo River and then paddle down it for hundreds of miles when I could not swim. Not that swimming would have helped me if I had gone over in a river that is reputed to be the deepest in the world and runs for the most part through nothing but jungle. But at 22 you have no fear. 

 

                  My canoe was one of these            

             As I rounded a bend my canoe got washed broadside up against a pile of water hyacinth. It was inches from being filled by the strong flowing current when my third life came to the rescue and I floated free once more.

            In England where I had gone to become a journalist I nearly came to grief in a little bubble car. It was mad of me to buy one because I am over 6ft tall, but it was all I could afford at the time. The driver has absolutely no protection at all in these vehicles because all he has in front of him is a paper thin metal door.

            I so nearly came to grief in this tiny car as I was driving into a cutting in a very hilly area. A car approached from the opposite direction going like a bat out of hell. It was travelling so fast that it shot up the embankment and did a wall of death ride past the left hand side of my bubble car and back onto the road. All its windows on the one side were smashed by the reflector posts on the edge of the road. When it stopped a short distant behind me two men got out. They were extremely agitated. One kept repeating: “I told him not to drive so fast. I told him not to drive so fast.”

            It turned out that the driver was trying out the car with a view to buying it and the dealer was with him. So that was the fourth life I had survived.

            I returned to South Africa to join The Star newspaper in Johannesburg and that’s when I bought a Toyota van because my wife Gayle and I used to go on camping trips with our two children, Simon and Samantha and this was an ideal vehicle for such outings.

           On a visit to Cape Town to see my mother I was driving down a slight slope in one of the suburbs when a drunk African ran across the road right in front of me without any warning. In the collision my entire windscreen disintegrated into hundreds of tiny, sharp bits of glass one of which got me in the right eye. Fortunately I never hit anything else as I brought the vehicle to a stop without being able to see much of what I was doing.                                                            

        Our family doctor was wonderful. He came out to the accident scene and then organised for me to see an eye specialist who put 10 stitches in my right eyeball. It was so well done that some 50 years later I can still see out of that eye without glasses. But I could so easily have lost not only an eye but my life if I had crashed into another vehicle or one of the many buildings in the area. I was never able too find out what happened to that unfortunate person.

            On another occasion shortly after I had started a new career as a self employed private eye I was waiting to meet a woman who had agreed to help me. I was in my car parked on the grass verge in a road in Germiston just as it was getting dark when a man pulled open my driver's side door and said: "We've been waiting for you" and at the same time he began hitting me on the head with a spanner he had taken out of the back of his trousers. After the first couple of blows my head was a sea of blood. I managed to bite his hand and get the spanner off him, but by then I was feeling as though I was about to pass out. All he was interested in was getting his spanner back so I felt I no alternative other than to hand it to him. As suddenly as he had arrived he stuck it in the back of his trousers and walked off.

               I managed to drive round the block into the driveway of house where the owner called an ambulance and I was taken to the local hospital. There I was in the operating theater having my face stitched up when my wife arrived. She told me afterwards that when she passed two of the hospital's orderlies the one said to the other, "Do you think he'll live man."     

              I suppose you can’t expect to reach the age of 91 without losing one or two lives, but it all depends on what kind of life you lead. I put mine on the line far too often and if I hadn’t been like a cat I would have certainly gone long ago. 

Do you think I’ve got enough lives left to reach 100 or MORE?

Regards, Jon meow,meow,purr,purr.

IS DONALD THE WORLD'S BIGGEST CHUMP?

 Dear Sad, Misguided World,

            Donald is rocking the whole world with a host of US tariffs that change almost daily while the US Congress, which I always thought was supposed to be running that country, remains mum. He loudly condemns dictatorships in other countries like Iran, while nobody in his own USA has the guts to speak up publicly and say that is exactly what this Chump is. 

“Up You” to the rest of the World!!! 

            He should have been forced to retire from politics ages ago. How many top companies still have a doddering old 79 year old at the helm.  He is clearly in his second childhood openly playing ‘Guess what I’m going to do next’ with the world, while we are all expected to hold our breath and hope it will not affect too many lives.

            Businesses around the World that have thrived on exports to the USA now don’t know whether they will ever be able to get back to ‘business as usual’ there or whether they will be forced into bankruptcy. Sorry, the future is now a lot brighter for them because Chump has just reduced the 45% tariffs that would have put them out of business, but they can’t make any definite plans because they don’t know what figure the President of the Greatest Market in the World will pull out of his hat next.

           Any kind of business has always been a bit of a lottery but this Chump has made backing a horse a much more sure bet.

            But the scariest thing of all is that Donald Chump is so full of himself that he could easily drag the USA (population 340 million) into another World (population 8 billion)War with atomic bombs flying all over the place.

           Was the way Hitler behaved before he thought his country could take on the world and win,   any different from what the World’s Biggest Chump is dong now now??????

            He has the World on tender hooks because Donald is such a Chump that even he doesn’t know what he will do next.

Regards, 
Jon, hoping that the USA will come to its senses before it is too late for all of us.

                                                                                                                                                           

 

ABSA BANK'S LATEST PROMOTIONAL GIMMICK IS TO ASK CLIENTS TO "TELL US YOUR STORY." WELL HERE IS MINE

 Dear Readers,      

          A couple of months or so ago I had some problems with my Absa bank cards at its Long Beach Mall branch in Cape Town. I had suggested that they alter the colour of one of them so that their Credit and Debit cards can’t be easily confused with one another. However the colour problem of the cards remained unchanged.

The similar Debit and Credit cards

         Then in late November of 2024 I was in the bank again to draw some money at the solitary teller. As she handed it to me she apologised because I had inadvertently used my credit card instead of my debit card to enter my withdrawal of the money which she handed to me. She explained that people often made the same mistake because the two cards were so similar.  So the problem could not just be explained away because I happen to be 91.

Arrie Rautenbach

         Having only a solitary teller just before Christmas showed Absa indifference to its clients so I complained about this using the email address of the CEO Arrie Rautenbach. I also raised the card problem once again.

          But it turned out that Rautenbach, who had become the bank’s Sixth CEO in as many years had taken early retirement in October so I was referred to Charles Russon the interim CEO. He replied saying he would “look into it.” Then I got an email from Charmaine Sharp, who told me that my complaint had been passed to her and she assured me that they would “provide me with the best quality service every step of the way.”

Charles Russon

        This was followed by telephone calls from two different people at the bank, who both apologised for the teller shortage, but neither of them gave me any hope that anything would be done to solve the card confusion.

          But I suppose if I am with a bank that clearly has a problem with its CEO appointments, what chance is there of me getting that “Best quality service every step of the way” that Charmaine promised me. But this is my story and I’m sticking to it.

          As part of Absa’s current credit card promotion it tells us it has a “a variety of  credit card benefits including up to 30% cash back from Absa Rewards Partners, interest free periods and airport lounge access.”

          “Your story matters,” the bank assures us. Just how much mine matters, is another story. So much for that “Exceptional service” Absa kept promising me.

Regards,

Jon

BRITAIN'S CELEBRITY CHEF JAMIE OLIVER HAS ENDORSED A SOUTH AFRICAN SUPERMARKET'S MOTOR BIKE DELIVERY SYSTEM THAT IS ENDANGERING BLACK LIVES

Dear Readers,

Britain’s celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has given his support to a “speed is everything” South African supermarket group’s motorcycle delivery scheme that is endangering the lives of Black riders, who are among the poorest members of our population. They have just 60 minutes to pick up and deliver customer’s orders from Checkers that has 169 stores of various kinds in the country.

            He was brought to South Africa by this supermarket group and when he ended a nation wide television broadcast to promote healthy eating he appeared on TV in a motorcycle crash helmet saying: “With Sixty 60 you’ll get it quicker than anybody else.”

            On the Checkers’ bags that deliveries come in there is a picture of a scooter and below it in capital letters it says: “SPEED IS EVERYTHING” and it goes on to tell customers: “Our driver cannot wait while you unpack your order.”

            Their delivery motorcyclists can be seen all over the country exceeding the speed limits, dodging between the traffic and edging over the white stop line at traffic lights so they can get ahead of everybody else when the lights go green. They are also dying or being seriously injured.

A Checkers delivery bike comes to grief

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

            After two Checkers Sixty 60 motorcyclists were involved in accidents in Mossel Bay the local weekly paper the Mossel Bay Advertiser asked Shoprite, which owns Checkers, if it would give its deliver drivers protective clothing or provide them with a safer means of transport for delivering grocers because they were particularly vulnerable on a motorbike.

            The answer they got was effectively “It’s not our problem because the Sixty 60 riders are independent contractors.” Pingo a last mile delivery company recruits them and makes sure they have the required cell phones, are properly licensed and have their own bike that is in good condition. But essentially they are own there own.

            I emailed Pieter Engelbrecht, the Chief Operating Office of Shoprite Checkers in an effort to get his view of the situation. I told him that all the indications were that his group was “putting death on the roads” by stressing the need for “speed” to their delivery drivers with a complete disregard for their lives.

            “All that your Shoprite Holdings Group appears to be concerned about is making money regardless of how many lives get terminated or seriously affected in the process,” I wrote.

            I got no proper reply from him. All I got was a long winded disclaimer headed “Standard E-mail Disclaimer” that had absolutely nothing to do with delivery riders.

            Checkers customers give their orders on-line and the delivery guys are expected to collect them from the stores and deliver them in under 60 minutes. It seems that no regard is taken for the fact that the distances they have to travel varies and that the roads are more congested at certain times of day than at others. The delivery fee to the customer is R35 with R20 of this going to the rider. They can expect to make around R1 800 to R2 200 per week and out of this they have to pay all the expenses of running their bikes.

Regards,

Jon

P.S. There are top notch CEO heads of huge companies and then there are others. When I emailed the head of Growthpoint Properties Norbert Sasse at 8.23 pm on a Monday he replied at 10.01 the same evening. His company owns retail and other properties in high quality areas all over South Africa, as well as properties in Eastern Europe, Australia and the United Kingdom. It is also the largest Real Estate Investment Trust firm on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. So I think Engelbrecht has a way to go to reach Sasse's high standard.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A PICK N PAY BRANCH THAT IS UNLIKELY TO BE AFFECTED BY THE CLOSURE OF THE GROUP'S STORES ELSEWHERE

 Dear Readers,

            On my travels around Africa as a self employed Private Eye I came across this branch of Pick ‘n Pay in Northern Namibia. And when I sent Raymond Ackerman a picture of it he appeared baffled. His group it seemed had expanded so fast under his leadership that this was a branch he didn’t even know they had.

            As Raymond and I had been to boarding school together at Bishops in Cape Town I sent him this letter about my discovery for a bit of fun.

         And this was his reply:

    It's a tragedy that now that Raymond is no longer with us his son Gareth, who had the top job of Chairman of the Group handed to him on a plate, has now decided to leave what appears to a sinking ship after 14 years at the helm. He's doing what ship captains get heavily criticized for and that is being the first to leave a sinking ship. Raymond died last year aged 92.

Gareth Ackerman

    In the first 21 weeks of the current financial year Pick n Pay closed 16 supermarkets that included 4 corporate stores and 12 franchised ones. The Company owned supermarkets, which account for most sales, had apparently significantly under performed in recent years. 

    The Ackerman family are giving up control of this retail giant that Raymond built up to what it became after buying the four store Pick n Pay business in Cape Town from their founder in 1967.

    There will be lot of distressed people in the Pick n Pay family who have the prospect of losing their job with the situation made worse by the fact that Christmas is not far away.  Of course Gareth has no such worries as he and his family have been more than adequately provided for. 

    Regards,

    Jon

MAU MAU KENYA 1955 AMBUSH

 Dear Readers,

          Damp, green forest rises to a bamboo jungle and from there the heath rises to the white capped peak of Mount Kenya.

          The snow glistens for a moment in the failing light. The tropical sun drops suddenly behind the earth and there is no lingering of the brilliance that is day. A peaceful, brooding silence hangs like a cloak over this the grandest peak for a thousand miles. Somewhere in the jungle an elephant trumpets his defiance while a leopard slinks forth to kill.

          These animals were perfectly at home here but for a White man during the Mau Mau uprising it was very different. He heard a twig snap when silence reigned. He saw a bush move when there was no wind. Fear was all around him.

          Deep in a thorny thicket four bearded men sat around a smouldering ember, because, as the sun went down the 12 000 foot altitude began to chill the jungle covered slopes. In the failing light a man left his companions swinging a stick as anybody might do with a walking stick. This was his confidence booster because his attention was now divided.

          Abruptly the tangled undergrowth gave way to an orderly cypress plantation. Beneath these crowded trees the light was far worse than the dusk itself.  Here a multitude of shadows follow one another into illusion after illusion.

          This man was no stranger to these woods. The path was scarcely visible yet he followed it unerringly for some distance until he came to a track used by the trucks that fetch the timber. This he chose in preference to the winding path.

          The man’s bare feet made little sound as he walked on the damp earth. He was nervous. His eyes could not penetrate the failing light and he knew that to anyone in the shadows he was as obvious as movement is to the adder’s eye.

          He was a hundred yards or so from the end of the wood when he noticed that the trees ahead of him leaned over to touch each other above the track, throwing a dark shadow across his path. On the edge of this shadow a small bush broke up the black outline on his right.

          He swung his comforter more vigorously. This shadow worried him like an evil spirit yet he had to pass it to continue on his way.

          At four in the afternoon a small patrol left the Regati police post to ambush terrorists on the paths they commonly use when they came down from their jungle hideouts to raid the crops in the Kuku Reserve below.

          On this occasion the patrol consisted of two white officers and four black askaris. To cover as much ground as possible the party divided into two groups of four and two.

          The largest group went off to set an ambush on a path in the Reserve while an officer and an askari disappeared into a cypress plantation. There the two of them made straight for the track used by the timber lorries where deep shadows from the trees above provided the perfect setting for an ambush. A small bush helped to draw attention away from any forms lying underneath it.

          The officer lay facing the snow capped peak while the askari guarded the other approach. It was not long before the Black man was asleep. As though sensing he was all alone his white companion moved restlessly above his Bren gun. It lay half under him, with its little black button resting smugly on “automatic.”

          The silence whispered to the dull grey light while the forest creaked with a myriad of scary sounds. The White man saw a shape that was not there. He heard a noise that was his own breathing. His senses ran off with his mind and naked terror dominated his will.

          Waiting to commit murder when he might well be slaughtered while he waited was an almost superhuman strain which was bound to break this man when darkness came.

          A soft noise crept into the silence. His mind now thought this was another trick. Nearer and nearer it came. Suddenly the officer looked up and there only a few yards away stood a bearded apparition.

          The Bren came up in one dreadful arc while the Black man braced himself to die.

Mount Kenya at 17 000 feet

          In a flash the trigger jumped the bolt which for some unknown reason seemed less eager for the kill. At this moment when a piece of metal hesitated the bearded man came to life and disappeared among the trees.

          Hours later the White man told the story to the others at the Police post of how, if the “bloody gun hadn’t jammed, I would have cut my first Mau Mau to pieces.”

          Alone in his bed that night a wave of relief swept over this young officer, only just out of his teens, and he thanked God that the Bren gun did jam. In the darkness he realised that the slaughter of an unarmed man would have left a bloody stain on his mind for life, especially as a gun like that, fired at point blank range, would have left that Mau Mau man terribly butchered.

Regards

Jon

P.S. The Kenya Emergency or Mau Mau Revolt was described as “one of the British Army’s bloodiest and most controversial post-war conflicts.” The Mau Mau led an extremely violent rebellion against British rule that included terrible atrocities in which it slaughtered its own people. The majority were members of the Kikuyu tribe. Only a mere 32 white settlers, mainly farmers, were murdered during the eight years of the rebellion, while an estimated 1819 Kenyans were killed for refusing to take the Mau Mau oath, or for merely accepting colonialism. Their most notorious massacre was in 1953 when they ordered everyone in the village of Lari into their huts and set fire to them. Those who tried to escape were hacked to death with machetes….Wikipedia