NEWS & ANALYSIS

"The devil wants my daughter! Schoolgirl ‘taken to a dark place'" - Daily Sun

The front page and lead story of SA's largest daily newspaper, August 20 2013

Daily Sun (August 20 2013) - THE defiant mother said she will never give in to the devil in her daughter's classroom . . ."I know what that evil girl wants," she said. "THAT QUEEN OF SATAN WANTS MY DAUGHTER!

"My daughter and I will use everything we can to save my child," said the 48-year-old mother, who is a sangoma. Speaking to Daily Sun, the 16-year-old, a pupil at a school in Braamfischer, Soweto, said the girl who shares a desk with her at school wants to take control of her life and even make her kill her mother.

The schoolgirl said the struggle started last year but the worst thing happened on Thursday. "After school the girl came to me and said she wanted to apologise for her rude behaviour," said the horrified teen.

"She held my hand and stroked it and it looked as if she was going to hug me, but before I knew it I was in a dark place," she said. She told Daily Sun she was suddenly surrounded by a group of teenagers, some of whom she recognised from school. "I was offered a bowl of blood to drink," she said. "I recall refusing to drink it but then I felt as if I had fainted."

When she woke up she was back in the classroom, surrounded by her friends and teachers. "They prayed for me to wake up because I could not respond," she said. The girl's mother, who has six other children, said she was frightened when she heard about the incident. "As a mother I got scared," she said. "The attacks on my child started last year."

She said when her daughter told her that it would be best if she killed her, she knew her daughter was being attacked by evil. "My child said because we fight so much it would be better if I died."

"She had become reserved and impatient with her siblings and I knew something bad was going to happen because that is what my ancestors showed me."

The mother said it had been prophesied at church that she should help save pupils involved in Satanic rituals. "I told this evil girl she will not win and that God will never forsake me. I include this girl in my prayers because she must also be healed. She is being used," she said.

The attacks on her daughter first appeared as nightmares in which she felt she was going to Satanic rituals in the middle of the night. But then she met a boy from her neighbourhood who said he would meet her at the place where they had always met at midnight!

Terrified, and wondering if the dreams were true, she went to church and prayed for hours. The dreams stopped for a while but on Thursday she was attacked again.

"But this time I am not worried," she said. "I sleep well at night and I will go back to school and sit next to that same girl. God is greater than any evil plan!" She said she just wanted people to know that these things can happen.

To make sure that her daughter is safe, the mother wakes her child at midnight every night to pray. She said that taking care of seven children isn't easy. "If God can bless me with a better paying job I will provide better for my children and life will be better," she said.

Spokesman for the Department of Education, Gershwin Chuenyane, said they will investigate the allegations.

See the Daily Sun mobi site for more on this and other stories....

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