‘Idle hands’ busy as grisly killings rock Pampierstad

In the final moments of his life, before his head was hacked from his body, teenager Lucky Taolo was tortured.

A cross was branded on his stomach, and his body dumped in a ditch a stone’s throw from his home in Pampierstad, in the heart of the rural Northern Cape.

Taolo’s death two weeks ago is the latest in a string of brutal killings alleged to have been carried out by schoolboys from the dusty village.

Local community leaders and church elders say the killings tell a story of innocence lost and are a result of “idle hands doing the devil’s work”.

Now two teens have traded their classrooms for prison cells and the remote village sits on edge.

Taolo’s father, Zenzile Maxambele, said the image of his son’s headless body was etched into his memory. “I see his body when I close my eyes. I can’t get it to leave me,” he said.

He last saw his son with two boys who live in the same street on September 12, when the trio asked for R2 to buy juice.

“They left and then my son didn’t come home. In the morning we heard people screaming and I ran to the sound and found my son in the ditch … there was a cross that was burned into his stomach,” he said.

The following day, a 16-year-old boy was arrested. Under his bed, wrapped in a plastic packet, was Taolo’s severed head.

“I don’t know why they did this to my son. He was a gentle boy. But because they burnt the cross into him I think that is satanism at work,” Maxambele said.

The alleged killer, who has been remanded in police custody while facing a charge of premeditated murder, cannot be named as he is a minor.

Taolo, said his father, had dreamt of becoming a policeman.

In August, the bodies of Stanley and Elizabeth Segae were found in the veld that surrounds the village. It is alleged that their 19-year-old son Tebogo, a pupil at the local high school, stabbed them to death in their home before lashing their bodies to a bakkie and dragging them through the streets.

“After their bodies were found the police followed the blood trail back to our home and found it locked. When they broke in there was blood all over the floor and it looked like he [Tebogo] was trying to clean up,” said Tebogo’s brother, Kenneth Segae.

There were bloodstained sheets and duvet covers, freshly laundered, on the washing line.

Stanley had spent his entire adult life as a mineworker, and Elizabeth had been a teacher.

Kenneth said that his brother and his parents had been at odds in recent months.

“My parents complained that he was being difficult, smoking drugs and refusing to attend school. He had also become quite withdrawn, and that was something we had noticed in him,” he said.

Kenneth added that his family had been ripped apart.

“My parents were wonderful people who didn’t deserve to die like that. My brother refuses to see us when we try and visit him. I don’t know what happened in that house, but he is still one of us.”

Tebogo, facing two charges of murder, remains in custody and will appear in court again on October 21.

Local church leader the Rev Morapedi Pico said evil spirits had gripped the village.

“People are no longer praying here and the Lord is punishing his people. That is why the people are suffering now,” he said.

“Drugs are a problem in this village. I see the children slipping away from us here.”

Village elder James Modungwa said that moral values in the settlement had been eroded by drug abuse.

The problem is nyaope, and those drugs change the children.

—  The problem is nyaope, and those drugs change the children.

“The problem is nyaope, and those drugs change the children. There is nothing for these children to do here and they fall into this trap,” he said.

“Idle hands do the devil’s work. These boys have nothing to do and I worry about the future for them. I worry about the future of my own children.”

The former director of Childline, Joan van Niekerk, who is now an independent child rights and protection consultant, said Pampierstad required urgent attention.

“This kind of violence doesn’t begin in the teen years and there are signs in children early on, either being cruel to one another or being cruel to animals. It suggests a departure from empathy.”

Van Niekerk said that in the case of Pampierstad, as in many other rural villages, a full range of social services was not on offer and as a result children fell by the wayside.

“In the village setting, it is very difficult to offer this full range of services, but this has to be addressed.”