Daily Sun (March 12 2014) - DICK MATHEBULA wanted the child's body in the closed coffin to be seen. He told the undertaker to take off the lid and ordered the people to look at the body of little Charmina. "I WANT YOU TO SEE WHAT HE DID TO MY GRANDDAUGHTER!" HE SAID.
Standing over the coffin, the 57-year-old grandfather called on the community to witness how Charmina Mathebula's body had been mutilated.
With rage born of a broken heart, Dick described the horror death the four-year-old girl suffered.
"My granddaughter was raped, beaten with a rock until she was dead and her lips and her tongue were cut off," he said.
"The killer tried to hide her body by covering her with a big rock in the water under a bridge."
On Thursday Daily Sun reported how residents saw Charmina, from Thulamahashe near Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga, being dragged to the river by a man described as an uncle.
Residents noticed the girl was crying and protesting but they thought nothing of it because the man had lived with Charmina's family for more than a year.
But then the man came back alone, claiming he had not seen Charmina and walked off. The girl was gone.
By now Dick was going crazy. He searched the village for the man and when he found him, he didn't believe the story.
He told neighbours to take the man to the police station while he went down to the river to search for the girl.
Later he received a call to say the man had confessed. He raced to the police station. The man told them where the body was and they went back to the river, where the found the girl's body in the water.
Dick said he almost killed the man himself. "I want to kill him. I had to restrain myself."
Pastor Kenneth Dlamini said Charmina's death was a huge shock for everybody. "Our village will forever be haunted by the brutality of this act," he said. He urged residents to fight such cruelty with the Word of God.
The alleged killer appeared in the Mhala Magistrates Court on Thursday on rape and murder charges.
He will remain behind bars until 13 March for a bail application.
At the funeral, ward councillor Rodgers Tshobete said the ANC will oppose bail but was booed off the platform by mourners who did not take kindly to his election talk at a funeral.
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