A 17-year-old girl, who handed herself in to South African police, has been charged with murder after killing a man who allegedly tried to rape her.

“She was on her way to a local tavern when she was allegedly attacked by the deceased and fought back,” police said.

The young woman stabbed the 21-year-old man, after overpowering him during a struggle, police say.

South Africa has one of the highest incidences of rape in the world. arguably the rape capital of the world and surely the rape capital of Africa.

There has been a recent spate of killings of women in the country, which has sparked national outrage.

South African Women now ask the big question: Will I be next?

The girl was not asked to plead when she appeared in the Lenyenye magistrates court in the northern Limpopo province.

The suspect, who is a minor under South African law and cannot be named, would be assigned a social worker and possibly a trauma counsellor to assist with the case, according to the police.

“She was visibly distraught when she arrived at the police station and will receive the necessary care given in such cases,” said police colonel Moatshe Ngoepe

She is expected to tell the court that she acted in self-defence, when the case resumes tomorrow, 14 of June.

Pleas of self-defence must pass a high legal threshold to be accepted by South African courts.

The defendant must prove that there were extenuating circumstances involved and that killing was the only option available at the time.

The country’s laws on self-defence have faced criticism in the past, with some legal analysts saying the law should offer more support to those forced to fight off attacks in a society with a high crime rate.

But some legal scholars have argued it is precisely because of this high crime rate that people should not be able to kill others with impunity and self-defence pleas should face high hurdles.

In this case and with the extremely high level of rape and violence to women in the country something has got to give here, this girls shouldn’t have to go to jail for  fighting for her own safety which president Zuma and his cronies should have been providing.

 

The president could not stop rape in the country as him self was at one time accused of rape too. He has no answer to rising crime and murder neither has he to the rising cost of leaving and looming civil war.

Legal expert Mannie Wits says that when looking at a self-defence plea, the court broadly uses the test of “what the reasonable man or woman would do in a similar situation”.

But he points out that in the South African context, this is becoming increasingly problematic as levels of violence have increased.

The level of violence towards women and even in between other citizens seems to have gone through the roof.

There has been so much demonstrations in the past for the government to do something about the sudden rise in crime rate, murder and rape but the situation has not improved one bit, the president even believed that if a woman is wearing certain dress she is asking to be raped.

 

The government has no answers to rise in crime, economic hardship and deterioration social system in the country.

This poor girl is not as strong as the attacker and younger, the only way to stop been raped is to attack him with whatever she had but unfortunately he died in the process which i think he thoroughly deserved as a scum bag of the society. The women don’t deserve what they get in South Africa, it has become a bit of a custom that the guys think its ok to rape the girls/women.

 Rape has become so epidemic that a medical technician had to develop this above product for women which has wished to have a teeth down below to fight against rape. No woman has to go through all these just to live

“The test of what a reasonable man in the western world would do in a similar situation to a man is not the same in South Africa.

 

South Africans are living under fear, they overreact. This is not a normal society,” he says.

Since President Zuma took over power the nation is far from normal, thousands have been unnecessarily killed, family destroyed, other African migrants are been attacked on a regular bases with no end to that and he has created so much division in a one time calm and united country.

Continues tomorrow after the hearing