Related Content Uncle denies killing girl at rubbish dump Harrowing testimony in court of little girl’s final hours

MURDER accused Jaftha Andries told Kannaland Mayor Nicky Valentyn that he threw eight-year- old Charmaine Conradie‘s body into a sewerage dam after raping her, the Oudtshoorn Circuit Court heard yesterday.

“I saw her struggling and dived in to save her but she was already dead. Then I threw her in a hole,” Andries reportedly told Valentyn.

Andries, 43, is standing trial for his niece‘s abduction, rape and murder. The child went missing on February 8 last year and her decomposed body was found a week later near the Calitzdorp rubbish dump.

Andries, who has pleaded not guilty, was arrested during an extensive search for Charmaine after apparently acting suspiciously. During the search the town‘s sewerage dam was emptied.

Valentyn said Andries told him the day after his arrest that he threw the girl in the sewerage dam. He said he found Charmaine at the dump on the Friday of her disappearance and asked her to walk with him to the mountains.

“She walked with me voluntarily and we ate a piece of bread in the mountain,” Andries apparently said.

He said when he wanted to return to the rubbish dump the child did not want to go with. He then tied her feet together and left her there.

Police station commissioner Captain Joey Strydom, Valentyn and Kannaland councillor Anthony Ewerts accompanied Andries to the area where he supposedly left the little girl but after searching for an hour, he claimed he could not remember the exact spot where he had left her as he had been drunk.

Valentyn told the court that Andries, who was taken back to the police van, called him over and told him he had been too embarrassed to say what had really happened to his niece. He then confided in Valentyn that he had raped the child in the mountains and that she had been covered in blood. He then took her back to the rubbish dump and raped her again.

Valentyn said Andries asked him to tell the police, which he did.

The accused then said he pushed Charmaine into the sewerage dam where she drowned before he could save her. He apparently told the mayor he had no choice but to hide the girl‘s body in a hole.

Later that night Andries asked Valentyn to visit him in jail, where he said he was sorry for what he had done as he knew Charmaine well and lived with her family. “I wanted very much to save her but I could not. You must help me,” he said to Valentyn.

On Wednesday, a different story about the little girl‘s last hours emerged in court when Owen Ryneveldt, who was in jail at the time Andries was awaiting trial, said the accused told him he and Isak van Rooyen found her at the rubbish dump and raped her repeatedly before bludgeoning her to death with a coke bottle.

They apparently decided to kill her and bury her in a warthog hole as she knew Andries and “would tell people”.

Van Rooyen was arrested and later released as he could not be positively linked to Conradie‘s death.

The trial continues.