Angry community members demanded retribution on Monday outside a court where a man accused of raping and murdering a 12-year-old girl in Cape Town appeared.

Many called for the return of the death penalty after discovering that the man had been released on parole after serving part of a 20-year sentence for rape, before he allegedly attacked Michaela Williams.

The Wynberg magistrate’s court heard that the 48-year-old man, who cannot yet be identified, was released on parole in 2018.

He lived in the same neighbourhood as his alleged victim’s family.Western Cape police said in a statement on Thursday that Michaela’s mother reported her missing on January 8, after which a search got under way.

“Vital information was followed as part of the investigation and the suspect [was] interviewed. The interview led to him pointing out where the body was. The suspect has subsequently been charged with murder,” said the police.

“A postmortem will soon be conducted to determine how she died and whether more charges could be added.”

According to the charge sheet, the suspect is being charged with rape and murder.

Before the hearing started, Michaela’s mother Beatrice Adams burst into tears in the gallery.

The suspect, wearing glasses, a yellow T-shirt and tracksuit pants, was not asked to plead. He stared straight ahead during the brief hearing.Prosecutor Nicky Konisi told magistrate Goolam Bawa that the state would oppose bail and asked for a lengthy postponement. She said postmortem results and statements were still outstanding.

“I would like to ask the court to bar the media and the public from publishing the name [and picture] of the accused until further notice. It is still early in the investigation,” said Konisi.

Bawa granted her the request. “The court is going to order that the identity of the accused [not be revealed] in any manner,” he said.

“Members of the media and the public are ordered not to publish his name or his picture. The members of the public, if you post pictures of the accused on Facebook, you may be charged.”

Police had their hands full removing throngs of angry people who could not find seats in court. “This case is sensitive and emotions run high. If you came to listen, please do that – listen. If we can’t control ourselves, it means we are part of the problem,” said Bawa.

Speaking through his lawyer Kyle Jason, the suspect said he did not intend applying for bail.

The matter was postponed until April 14.

“The death penalty must be brought back,” said activist Shariefa Daniels outside court.

“I feel very, very sad. This man was out on parole on a rape case. Had the authorities told us about it, we could have warned our children about him.

“The justice system has failed us.”

Community members demonstrate outside the Wynberg magistrate’s court as the alleged child killer appeared inside.

Six people collapsed and were taken to hospital – five of them in a critical condition – after apparently ingesting an unknown substance in the Cape Town suburb of Wetton on Monday.

ER24 spokesperson Russell Meiring said the ambulance service was initially alerted to several people in desperate need of help.

“It is believed to have been some sort of poisoning incident. All those affected had ingested some sort of substance which is not yet known,” he told TimesLIVE.

It is not known if the victims were related or knew one another.

Cape Town law enforcement spokesperson Wayne Dyason said: “City law enforcement officers on patrol in Wetton were alerted to an incident in which three males and one female had collapsed at a bus stop.”

He said the victims received medical attention at the scene by paramedics, adding that “one of them was experiencing convulsions”.As the paramedics were treating them, another person was reported lying on the pavement in nearby Walnut Road and a sixth had collapsed on the corner of St Joseph’s Road and Wetton Road.

“The patients were treated for their injuries and provided with several advanced life support interventions before they were transported to nearby hospitals for further care,” said Meiring.

A long-distance minibus taxi crashed in the Eastern Cape on Monday, killing five children.
Image: 123RF/Elizabeth Crego
Five children were killed and 16 other passengers injured when a long-distance minibus taxi rolled on the R61 near Ngcobo, in the Eastern Cape, early on Monday.

The taxi was ferrying passengers from the Western Cape when it left the road near Beyeye Locality, Manzana Village, at around 5am.

“The taxi rolled, fatally injuring five passengers, who are believed to be children between five and 14 years of age. Sixteen others, including the driver, were seriously injured and all rushed to the hospital at Ngcobo,” said police spokesperson Capt Khaya Tonjeni.

“The identities of all the deceased are still being withheld as some of their relatives are yet to be informed of their deaths.”

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Acting provincial police commissioner Maj-Gen Andries Swart conveyed his condolences to the families who lost their relatives and wished the injured a speedy recovery.

Commuters will have to wait months before the full Metrorail service is restored in Cape Town.
Image: GroundUp/Tariro Washinyira
It’s been a nightmare start to 2020 for thousands of long-suffering Cape Town commuters, with Metrorail’s central line and the MyCiTi N2 bus service still suspended — and no sign that the services will be restored any time soon.

The City of Cape Town has no time frame for the reintroduction of the N2 express service to Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain from the city centre. The service was suspended in June last year after a quarrel between the shareholders of the N2 Express company, the Congress of Democratic Taxi Associations (Codeta), the Route 6 Taxi Association and the Golden Arrow Bus Service.

According to the city’s mayoral committee member for transport Felicity Purchase, approximately 4,000 commuters use the service daily.

Luyanda Mtamzeli, from Ilitha Park in Khayelitsha, used the MyCiTi bus service to get to work in Cape Town. He said he had heard rumours about the reason for the suspension, “but I do not know what the truth is”.

He used to spend R450 a month to load his MyCiTi bus card. Now he spends more than R1,000 a month to get to work by taxi. He takes one minibus taxi from Ilitha Park to the Site C taxi rank, then another from Site C to the city centre.“I use R52 a day for a return trip to work. So that is more than R250 a week that goes to transport. But I have decided that I will be using Golden Arrow because it will be much cheaper,” said Mtamzeli.

Purchase said the city was “in consultation with the national department of transport to find an amicable solution”, but could give no date for the resumption of the service.

“We are trying our best to resolve the challenges and to have the buses back on the road. Also, the city is extremely anxious to get the service up and running again because of the near-total collapse of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) and Metrorail”.

Meanwhile, the southern and northern Metrorail lines are not working properly and service on the central line to Kapteinsklip and Chris Hani stations has been suspended since last October due to vandalism between Bonteheuwel and Nyanga. Only the Lavistown branch of the line is running. The central line runs from Cape Town to Langa, where routes branch to Mitchell’s Plain, Chris Hani/Kapteinsklip and Lavistown. The Lavistown route passes through Belhar and ends in Bellville.

Asked what Metrorail was doing to fix the problem, spokesperson Riana Scott said: “All regions are monitoring performance continuously and reporting diligently to enable our principals to develop cross-functional recovery and maintenance programmes to incrementally address the most critical issues.”

She said it would take “several months at least” to restore the Chris Hani and Kapteinsklip services.The impact of continuous metal theft, vandalism and damage of essential infrastructure remain debilitating. Safety is a priority and operational alternatives are implemented to ensure safe operations, inevitably leading to more frequent stoppages and longer journey times.

“The recovery of the two central corridors will not be a quick fix and it is estimated to be in the medium-term (several months at least). The critical areas that have been decimated by vandalism must be properly enclosed to enable the rebuilding of substations, reinstallation of related infrastructure and installation of new signalling.”

Scott said ticket sales showed that on the central line there were about 23,000 daily weekday trips to Cape Town from Kapteinsklip, and 25,000 from Khayelitsha.

Dalton Ndongeni of Public Transport Voice, an organisation that advocates for quality and equality in the South African public transport sector, said there had been no communication from Metrorail since October on when the service will resume, or the extent of the damage.

He accused the Western Cape minister of transport and public works, Bonginkosi Madikizela, of showing a lack of interest in the working-class struggle to access safe, affordable and reliable transport.

An international team uses “maser” emission phenomena to study a young star located roughly 22,000 light years from the earth.
Image: 123RF/karandaev
Two astronomers from the North-West University (NWU) are part of a 15-country research team that has observed star bursts – or growth spurts – previously unknown to humankind.

“It is a privilege to be at the cutting edge of humanity’s efforts to understand space and celestial bodies, and to have witnessed star behaviour that is entirely new,” said associate professor James Chibueze of NWU’s Centre for Space Research.

Chibueze and Dr SP van den Heever, also from the centre, are part of an international team of astronomers who have been studying a young star located approximately 22,000 light years away from the earth, known as the G358-MM1 high-mass protostar.

While the two NWU astronomers have been observing this star from the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory near Krugersdorp, northwest of Johannesburg, other astronomers have been keeping an eye on it from observatories in Australia, China, Germany, Korea, Japan, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Chile, the UK and the US.What makes G358-MMI so special is that it has been displaying growth spurts that astronomers say are unique.

“The star event we have been observing is the first of its kind to have been recorded from earth,” said Chibueze, who is among the co-authors of a letter published in Nature Astronomy, one of the world’s top-rated academic journals.

Chibueze said the growth bursts of high-mass protostars like G358 are seldom seen by astronomers as these events are rare and difficult to observe directly.

In this case, however, the international research team has been using what is known as “maser” emission phenomena to study the star. Maser is similar to laser but uses microwaves instead of light waves and can be used to monitor and measure activity in space.

Using maser observation, astronomers have been able to capture “heat waves” emanating from the star during what is thought to be growth events. These waves of heat were found to be only slightly slower than light.

While this heat-wave phenomenon has been observed twice before in other high-mass protostars, G358 is different because of the variety of the bursts.

“TheG358-MMI event may therefore represent a new species amongst a ‘zoo’ of high-mass protostar accretion burst varieties,” the letter in Nature Astronomy states.

This “zoo” is likely to diversify as the research team around the world continues to keep tabs on the young star’s activity.

“The team’s discoveries are hugely exciting and we are hopeful that further investigation will reveal more about the physical processes taking place within the G358 star,” added Chibueze.