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Serial rapist Mongezi Jingxela is finally behind bars

Dudu Busani

Dudu Busani

"How did you find me?" These were the first words uttered by serial rapist Mongezi Jingxela when he found his home surrounded by police on the day of his arrest three years ago.

Jingxela, 39, the worst sexual offender in the South African history will spend the rest of his life behind bars, thanks to Captain Zakhele Zwane, a man who is now regarded as a hero.

Zwane was just a police inspector based in Krugersdorp when he was assigned to a case where a woman was raped, by a man who had promised to give her a job in 2001.

Within a few months, Zwane had three more similar cases involving different women. They all had the same description of the rapist but the scar on his neck made it clear they were talking about the same man.

"At that time I had been working on a case involving another serial rapist Sipho Dlamini. I put him on the identity parade but the women said it wasn't him. It then dawned to me that there was another serial rapist on the loose," said Zwane.

Towards the end of 2001, Zwane had made progress with the investigation and expected to nail the culprit soon.

"I was so close to cracking the case even though at that time I did not have his name. But he suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth, I did not hear of a woman who came to report a similar rape incident again, " he said.

It wasn't until July 2004 that another woman was reported to have been raped by the same man.

"After that the cases kept pouring in, at first I did not think it was the same man. But when I went back to the dockets of cases I'd handled two years earlier, it hit me that the monster had resurfaced and was coming like a strong wind."

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