GAUTENG. – A woman claims her neighbour doctored her drink before allegedly raping her. The woman, a single mother whose identity cannot be disclosed, allegedly woke up in hospital in April 2025 with blood and bruises, with no memory of what happened the previous evening.
The man appeared briefly in the Pretoria Regional Court on Thursday. AfriForum's private prosecution unit says this came after pressure was placed on police to investigate the case.
Barry Bateman, spokesperson for AfriForum's private prosecution unit, says the woman turned to the unit after her attempts to get police to act had not yielded progress.
According to AfriForum, the incident was initially reported in April 2025, but a criminal case was only registered on 22 July 2025, a day after the unit referred the matter to the provincial head of the police unit for family violence, child protection and sexual offences.
The woman claims that on the evening of 20 April 2025 she was invited to her neighbour's apartment for a drink. She remembers noticing an extremely bitter taste before she lost consciousness. She woke up the next day in a Tshwane district hospital. When her family members went to her apartment because they could not reach her, they allegedly found blood spatters on the floors and walls. They also found the neighbour's dressing gown in her bedroom, while her clothes were later found at his residence. Forensic samples were taken at a private hospital and the incident was reported to police.
Bateman says the case's progress comes amid President Cyril Ramaphosa's announcement of an audit and recovery plan for cases of gender-based violence that have stalled or been abandoned. According to Bateman, the struggle to get the case investigated and placed on the court roll shows how poorly such cases are sometimes handled. He says the unit is also still awaiting feedback from police on other cases of violence against women.
This article is an automatic English translation of a Nuusflits article originally published in Afrikaans. Read the Afrikaans original.
