The Alexandra Magistrates' Court in Johannesburg sentenced a 40-year-old man to life imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to raping his 17-year-old biological daughter. 

It is alleged that the father started raping his daughter from May 2022 until January 2023. Gauteng National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Lumka Mahanjane confirmed the matter.

"The father called his daughter from Zimbabwe to come and assist her aunt with her newborn baby. After realising that she was not treated well at her aunt's place, she called her father to come fetch her. On her first night at her father's place, the father ordered her to share a bed with him. The father asked her if she was still a virgin and she replied in the affirmative. He then insisted that he wanted to check if she was telling the truth and proceeded to insert his fingers into her private part and later penetrated her without using protection," she said.

Mahanjane said the daughter sometimes would sleep on the floor while her father slept with her stepmother in bed. "He would step down to the floor and rape her in the presence of the stepmother. However, the stepmother said she did not see or hear anything. When she fell pregnant, her aunt questioned her about who fathered the baby and that is when she reported that her father was raping her. She also told her that her father forced her to frame any boy as the father of her unborn child. When her uncle heard the news, he then assisted her to open a case at Alexandra Police Station in January 2023," she said.

Control Prosecutor Percy Ramushu argued that the father, being in a position of authority and being one to take care of the child as the constitution provides, violated the same constitution. Further, that the only place that the child should run to is the very home that violated her. 

"He further stated that there is no other sentence suitable for him than a life sentence," she said.