The Voyeur has his Day

When you are in Zimbabwe, the only place you can be alone with your girlfriend is the bush. There are no theme parks, no movie houses, or recreation places where you can spend a decent day with your date. You either choose the bushes, or the lodges. Most people cannot afford the few movie houses, which are only situated in harare and Bulawayo anyway, and the lodges carry an unwanted connotation of paid sex work. Almost no girl want to be caught dead in a lodge.

So Shingai Mubani* chose the bushes. It was a Sunday, and after church, the young man decided to take his girlfriend on a stroll in the bushy seclusion separating Mufakose and Crowborough. On the way, the two lovers met a masked man who told them he was a police officer, and that Shingai was under arrest.

The ‘officer’ threatened Shingai with an axe he was holding, until the latter fled the scene, fearing for his life. When he stopped at a distance, Shingai paused to ponder why a police officer would want to cover his face, and why he would threaten his accused away. Curious, he returned to the place where he had left his girlfriend – to be greeted by the horror sight of the ‘policeman’ actually fighting to pin down his girl, with the clear intent of rape in his mind.

A fight ensued, which ended when the rape attacker was repulsed by the charging boyfriend. The girl was saved.

But that was only for her. Other women were not so lucky to have their loved ones fight for them through thick and thin.

Before July 2009, Susan* and Mayer* had never met. They might have never met in life had they not agreed to roam the secluded places in Crowborough with their beaus on the fateful day. That is when they finally met; they were having a time of their lives when a masked man pounced, first on Susan and her partner; he chased the man away by threatening him with an axe before he abducted the hapless woman.

On the way, they met Mayer and her man, and the mask adopted the same trick that had worked well the first time. He ordered the two women to strip every peace of clothing material they had on them, before trussing their hands on their backs with their brassieres, and ordering them to lie down. He raped them, one after the other again and again. And again. And again. And again.

“Impossible,” thought Sgt Farai Kunyongana as he read each of the statements from the docket the Officer-In-Charge Marimba had handed over for the seasoned investigator to ferret, scratching his balding head in disbelief all the time. How on earth was this possible?

What kind of a man would run away, leaving the love of his life at the mercy of the devil? And what kind of a man would rape a woman five times in quick succession?

Just three years into his life in the ZRP, Sgt Kunyongana – then a Constable – had found himself on the chair as an investigator at Marimba Police Station Victim Friendly Unit in 2006.

“It was by accident that I found myself at the VFU,” Sgt Kunyongana – now at Glen View VFU – chuckles. “I was asked to stand in for a senior man who had gone on leave – and I have been stuck to the VFU desk ever since.”

Investigations were not new to him though; just fresh from Depot, he had been posted to the Investigations Section at the station after his two weeks of station tutorship had lapsed. His first successfully executed docket was a theft case he only vaguely remembers now.

“I have investigated so many cases that have ended with most an accused facing the wrong end of a magistrate’s final judgement,” he says. “When I stood before the Board of Promotions, the convenors even wondered why my Record of Service was not littered with Memoranda of Good Work.”

Until now, the case that stayed close to his heart was that of a man who had been handed a 20-year jail term for raping his maid. Twenty years – it is an awfully long time to spend behind confinement.

But now, on a cold July day in 2009, in his frost-bitten hands lay a cold case that, in its third year of mystery, was approaching the throes of a mythical legend. The charge sheet contained ten counts of rape, three of assault, robbery (two counts), and one for impersonating a police officer.

Interviews with witnesses led to the theory of a voyeur who lurked in the shadows and watched as lovebirds got down to business, obviously oblivious of a drooling silhouette ogling at them. As the mercury heated up and temperatures rose, the mask – himself aroused after watching from a vantage point as the lascivious drama literally unfold – would decide to get involved himself, brandishing the axe at the man, who almost always fled, leaving his woman at the mercy of the merciless mask.

“The Woollen Mask would target couples,” wrote Sgt Kunyongana in his affidavit. “He threatened them, searched them for money and other valuables before assaulting the males, resulting in them running away leaving their wives and girlfriends with the accused, who would then rape them for up to five times.”

The police suspect that The Mask’s bionic virility was strongly linked to a liquid he kept in a 2L container, one of which was recovered from a rape scene. The witnesses testified that their tormentor always wore a condom during the ordeal; but none was ever recovered from the crime scenes.

It was time to think outside the box; since The Mask targeted couples - Sgt Kunyongana decided to team with another investigator and went to the area where the suspect had committed the crimes, pretending to be lovers.

“But we were surprised that he never approached us,” said Sgt Kunyongana. This mystery was to be solved much later, when the member learned that the alleged rapist, impersonator and robber knew his local Sheriff's Department only too well; laughing in his flight as he saw them trying to trap him.

But that was for later times. In the meantime, the VFU coordinator discovered that there was an accused person on bail from the courts, one of whose bail conditions was that he report to Marimba police station every day between 6am and 6pm. A scan of the accused’s docket revealed some similarities on the Modus Operandi of the accused to the ones he was investigating.

Might as well check him out, if it was only for the purpose of making sure he was not the one.

“I got up early to meet the accused at the Charge Office. But when I got there, the details manning the office told me the accused had already checked with them a long time ago.”

Now there was a tricky situation. The bail conditions of Mlamuleli Mpofu had clearly stated that he was to report to the station precisely between 6am and 6pm . But this guy was coming to Marimba at the break of dawn only to disappear again as light approached. What was he afraid of in the light?

Said Sgt Kunyongana, “I decided that if Mohammed was refusing to come to the mountain, then the mountain would go to Mohammed.

“I left my warm blankets as I started for the charge office around four.”

Sure enough, Mpofu came in at 5:40am, and must have been surprised to learn that instead of heading straight back home, he was going to spend some time in the holding cells pending investigations in the latest rape spates.

“He looked like a decent man. Thirteen points at ‘A’ Level, and he lived with his parents in a nice house they built in Glen View 1. Of course, he denied the allegations. He asked me if I thought he would still be reporting to the station, if he was the one who committed the passionate atrocities.”

A search party, led by the investigating officer, went to scour the accused’s place nevertheless – and they recovered a small axe hidden under the mattress, two woollen mask hats, a belt, a knife, a pair trousers and two pairs of blue and white tackies. The belt was identified by a male complainant as the one he had been robbed of by a masked man who threatened him and then raped his wife after the man had fled for his life.

An identification parade was held and all the witnesses positively identified Mpofu as the one who had caused them so much grief.

The investigating officer had had enough. He took his case to the Harare Regional Magistrate’s court, whereupon it was heard by Magistrate Peter Kumbawa. It occupied the veteran magistrate’s time for six months between July and December last year, and when it was finally over, Mpofu was found guilty of 19 counts of rape, one count of impersonating a police officer and others of assault and robbery.

“But although the magistrate returned a guilty verdict, he told the accused that the gravity of his crimes was beyond the sentencing powers of the magistrate court. So, early this year, the case was taken to the high court, which slapped Mpofu with a jail sentence of 90 years, 30 of which were set aside on condition of good behaviour.”

At that time, almost everyone had ditched Mpofu, including his relatives who are alleged to have said they could provide legal advise to such a sadist no more.

As it is, the convict has ten pending cases from Glen View Police; but the glitch is that some witnesses are now reluctant to come forward and stand before their supposed tormentor in court. But with his ultimate confinement, cases of a serial rapist on the prowl died in the suburbs surrounding Glen View Police Station.

Sgt Kunyongana was voted the second best cop in Harare South District for bringing the sad chapter of the voyeuristic rapist to a close.

*Real names have been withheld to protect the victims’ identity.