By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The African National Congress (ANC) slammed Civil Society Group AfriForum for laying criminal charges against its secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, calling the move “disingenuous”.
AfriForum, which is representing Bergview College principal Jaco Pieterse, announced the charges last week.
These include crimen injuria, contravention of the Cybercrimes Act and intimidation, stemming from public statements made by Mbalula, EEF leader Julius Malema and Eastern Cape education MEC Fundile Gade. They identified Pieterse as the rapist in the 7 year old Cwecwe case, despite no legal charges ever being brought against him.
The incident drew national and international outrage after the child’s mother revealed in a podcast that her daughter was allegedly raped on school grounds.
At a press conference outside Sophiatown Police Station in Johannesburg, AfriForum spokesperson Barry Bateman condemned what he termed as distressing false accusations.
“South Africa has a rape crisis, we have a child abuse crisis, and being falsely accused of committing such a crime against a child is devastating. There must be consequences for people who falsely accuse others in the public domain,” Bateman said.
He cited comments by Mbalula referring to Pieterse as “an animal” and criticised Malema’s public declaration on 6 April that “the principal who raped Cwecwe must know we are coming for him.”
However, the ANC has slammed AfriForum’s decision to pursue the matter, calling it “disingenuous, ideologically driven, and flawed.”
The party maintains that defending outrage against Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBV-F) is not a crime.
“We will not apologise for speaking out in defence of the voiceless,” ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu wrote in a statement.
“We call on all progressive forces, including our Alliance partners, the ANC Women’s League, youth formations, religious and community organisations, to reject any effort to criminalise outrage and moral clarity in the face of GBV-F,” Bhengu added.
The party has reaffirmed its support for Mbalula, saying he carried the voice of millions when he condemned the rape of a seven-year-old girl at Bergview College.
While there were initial suggestions that the alleged assault of the seven-year-old occurred in a classroom at Bergview College, an independent school in Matatiele, this was later brought into question.
As a result the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) decided not to prosecute anyone for the alleged rape of seven-year-old *Cwecwe, calling for a review of the police investigation.
The NPA’s decision came on the back of Police Minister Senzo Mchunu’s revelations that there were no witnesses in the case and no foreign DNA had been found on the little girl.
Social justice organisations have described the NPA’s decision as a failure of justice.
The alleged assault took place in October 2024, with a case docket opened in November that year. In April 2025 the case was spotlighted in a series of media reports, sparking widespread outrage over the seeming lack of progress in identifying a suspect.
Brigadier Athlenda Mathe, SAPS national spokesperson, confirmed that the head of the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Investigations Unit had concluded the investigation into Cwecwe’s case and resubmitted the docket to the Eastern Cape DPP.
Luke Lamprecht, the head of advocacy for Women and Men Against Child Abuse, described Cwecwe’s case as “very complicated”.
“They don’t have a disclosure of who actually hurt her… The second problem appears to be that there are some challenges around the medical evidence, and my understanding of the challenges was that they did not get sufficient or proper or analysable DNA,” he said.
Cwecwe is a pseudonym created to protect the identity of the rape survivor.