Deb Howitt

In 2017, 21-year-old Stellenbosch University student Hannah Cornelius was carjacked after dropping off a friend in the early hours of the morning. She was brutally gang-raped, stabbed in the neck, and mu*dered when a 37.5-kilogram rock was dropped on her head. The details of what happened are deeply disturbing. On May 27, 2017, Hannah and her friend, 22-year-old Cheslin Marsh, were sitting in her grandmother’s blue-and-white Volkswagen Citi Golf outside his residence in Stellenbosch, South Africa, saying their goodbyes. Four men approached the vehicle and threatened them with a sharpened screwdriver and a knife through the open window. Vernon Witbooi, Geraldo Parsons, and Eben van Niekerk forced their way into the car. At approximately 3:40 a.m., the vehicle drove away with all five people inside. Cheslin was forced into the boot while the group drove to a drug dealer’s home, where they smoked crystal meth before continuing through Stellenbosch. At 4:34 a.m., CCTV footage captured Witbooi entering a petrol station and attempting to use Cheslin’s stolen bank card. The PIN he had been given was incorrect. Near Kraaifontein, the men stopped and dragged Cheslin from the boot. They forced him onto the ground, beat him over the head with bricks, and left him unconscious. Hannah was taken to an isolated paintball range, where she was gang-r*ped by multiple men over several hours. She was then driven to Groenhof Farm, stabbed in the neck, and k*lled when a 37.5-kilogram rock was dropped onto her head twice. Her body was discovered later that morning. Cheslin eventually regained consciousness and managed to walk to the nearest home he could find. He survived, but was left permanently deaf in one ear. Witbooi and Parsons were arrested that afternoon following a police chase. Van Niekerk and Nashville Julius were arrested the following day. In November 2018, the Western Cape High Court sentenced Witbooi, Parsons, and van Niekerk to two life sentences each for Hannah’s r*pe and mu*der. Julius received 22 years for robbery and kidnapping. At the sentencing, Hannah’s father, Willem Cornelius, spoke words that captured the devastation experienced by her family: “Our family died on the day Hannah died.” Willem died on December 9, 2022. Hannah’s mother, Anna, had been found dead in the South Atlantic Ocean in March 2018. Her death was ruled accidental. And Hannah’s younger brother, who has autism, continued asking when his sister was coming home. A young woman’s life was stolen in an act of unimaginable violence. Her family was left carrying a grief that no sentence could ever undo. Hannah deserved a future filled with love, laughter, and possibility. May her memory never be forgotten.