⚠ Content Warning: Child Sexual Violence & Homicide

Crime & Justice — South Africa

He Promised Her Sweets.
Then He Took Her Life.

On 19 December 2022, an 11-year-old girl was lured into the bush in Kliptown, Gauteng, raped, and strangled to death. Her killer, Jorge Tivane, has been sentenced to two life terms. But this child’s death demands we say more — and say it loudly.

By Collen MakumbirofaMakumbirofa FarmsKliptown, Gauteng19 December 2022

We do not know exactly what Jorge Tivane had been doing in South Africa. We do not know how long he had been here, or what brought him all the way from Mozambique. What we know — what the court established, what the evidence proved — is what he did to an 11-year-old girl in Kliptown on the nineteenth of December 2022. He promised her sweets. He lured her into the bush. He raped her. And then, when it was done, he strangled her to death with a piece of cloth. An eleven-year-old child.

Case Summary

• VictimGirl, 11 years old — Kliptown, Gauteng
• Date19 December 2022
• PerpetratorJorge Tivane, Mozambican national
• MethodLured with promise of sweets; raped; strangled with cloth
• SentenceTwo concurrent life sentences — Lenasia Regional Court, Gauteng

The Lenasia Regional Court in Gauteng sentenced Tivane to two concurrent life sentences. That is where he belongs — removed permanently from any possibility of doing this again. But a sentence, however just, cannot give back what was taken. It cannot undo the last moments of a child who trusted an adult who offered her something sweet. It cannot fill the absence her family now carries every single day.

“This 11-year-old girl we lost cannot leave my heart. Children must be protected — they are the future.”

— Collen Makumbirofa

I will say plainly what many are thinking: rapists and murderers like Jorge Tivane must face the harshest possible consequences. A society that cannot protect its children from monsters like this one has failed at the most basic duty it owes its people. These perpetrators — who prey on the smallest, most defenceless among us — have no place in a civilised world.

There will be those who use Tivane’s nationality to make this into a story about immigration, about foreigners, about borders. Let that argument be rejected completely. Crime has no nationality. Jorge Tivane does not represent Mozambique. He does not represent Mozambican people. It is possible — likely, even — that a man like Tivane came to South Africa precisely because he was running from consequences in his own country. That is not a story about where he came from. It is a story about who he is, and about the gaps in cross-border accountability that dangerous men learn to exploit. He was acting alone. He represents no one but himself.

“Crime has no nationality. This evil-doer was on his own and does not represent anyone.”

— Collen Makumbirofa

What this case does demand of us is an honest reckoning with how we protect children. Not in speeches, not in awareness campaigns, but in real, structural ways. Are our systems — our policing, our courts, our cross-border intelligence — designed to catch predators before they reach children? The answer, for this little girl, was no. And that must change.

I make no apology for the anger in these words. It makes me furious to see adults harm children in this way. Children are innocent. Children are defenceless. Children are, in every sense that matters, our future — and we are failing them. The memory of this 11-year-old girl, who should be alive today, has left a permanent mark on my heart. I carry her, and I believe we all should.

Jorge Tivane will spend the rest of his life behind bars. That is justice. But let this child’s story do more than end with a sentence. Let it be the reason we demand better laws, better enforcement, better protection. Let it be the reason adults everywhere look at the children around them and resolve — with everything they have — never to let something like this happen again.

She was eleven years old. She went for sweets and she never came home. Remember her.

Collen Makumbirofa

Makumbirofa Farms  |  South Africa

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