Family of murdered teenager 'heartbroken'

Deputy minister Maggie Sotyu visits the family of teenager Sinoxolo Mafevuka.

Cape Town – The family of slain teenager Sinoxolo Mafevuka still don’t know how she died a week after the teenager was found half naked in a communal toilet in Khayelitsha.

The young woman was raped and killed after walking to the communal toilets used by the community in the informal settlement.

The toilets are a four-minute walk from the tiny shack where she lived with her family, and in an area where there are no lights and no locks on the facilities.

The teenager, who was raised by a single mother alongside two siblings and various cousins, took the habitual 270 steps to the toilet one night last week, and never came home.

She was discovered on Tuesday, March 1 by a resident on her way to the toilet in the morning.

Sitting in the tiny blue shack where Mafevuka grew up, her cousin Dan Mtala said on Thursday the family was heartbroken because the teenager had been a “beautiful soul”.

“She was a quiet, wonderful person. This came out of the blue. We are in pain. We don’t know what happened.”

'Don't know how she died'

Mtala said the police had not even informed them of any developments.

“We are very sad, because Sinoxolo died last week. They only came today because the minister was here. We don’t know how she died even, she didn’t have any scars to show what happened to her. She just died. We maybe think she was strangled,” he said.

Deputy Police Minister Police Maggie Sotyu visited the family on Thursday, and assured them she would make sure the police followed up with them constantly.

The family told the minister that they had not seen or heard from the police since the day Sinoxolo's body was discovered.

They had also been very upset when they heard that the suspected killers of another teenager, Franziska Blöchliger, had been found within days.

Khayelitsha Development Forum chairperson, Ndithini Thyido, said no death should be better than another one.

He said Mafevuka died because the only toilet she had access to was far from her house. “The girl who was forced by circumstances to walk a distance to the toilet, has gone unnoticed,” he said.

Mafevuka will be buried next week in the Eastern Cape.