State wants 225 years for repeat offender found guilty of murdering Tazné van Wyk

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Convicted murderer, repeat rapist and kidnapper Moyhdian Pangkaeker will be sentenced on 22 counts, including murdering Tazné van Wyk at the Western Cape high court on 14 February.

His counsel suggested a sentence of 30 years as one or more life sentences “will be a death sentence of sorts”, his lawyer, Saleem Halday, told the court this week.

The state disagrees and wants at least nine life sentences for Pangkaeker, which translates to 225 years imprisonment.

In his submissions during mitigation proceedings, Halday pointed out his client’s relatively advanced age of 58 years.

“If a life sentence is handed down on one or more of the abovementioned counts, the accused will be in the region of 83 years old when he can even be considered for parole. This age of 83 is well below the life expectancy in our country. It will be a death sentence of sorts,” he said.

Should Pangkaeker receive a 30-year sentence — inclusive of the two-year court trial — he will be in his mid-seventies when he becomes eligible for parole, Halday said. By then, Pangkaeker would be too “old and frail” to reoffend, should he be granted parole.

 “He would have had a long time in prison to undergo the rehabilitation process and reflect on his life as he is approaching the end of his time in this world. Perhaps there may even be a time for forgiveness and reconciliation between the accused and his siblings, all of them being much older and wiser,” said Halday.

Pangkaeker was convicted in October on charges including common assault, indecent assault, two of sexual assault, eight of rape, murder, two of kidnapping, child exploitation, incest, violating a corpse and absconding parole. He had pleaded not guilty on all counts except for absconding his parole twice.

In court this week, Halday recalled the accused’s difficult childhood, having been a victim of domestic abuse and violence at the hands of his father. Pangkaeker also grew up in a gang-infested community where crime, the abuse of drugs and alcohol as well as unemployment were evident. Due to financial constraints, he left school at a young age.

The same circumstances were submitted to the Bellville regional court in 2008 when he appealed his sentence after being found guilty of kidnapping and culpable homicide.

He took his wife Rosetta Petersen’s two-year-old son, who was not his biological child, from her for about three months, during which the toddler was beaten and neglected, leading to his death, according to the appeal documents.

The appeal was dismissed and Pangkaeker was sentenced to an effective 10 years in 2008.

This week, Halday asked the court how the process of Pangkaeker’s rehabilitation, as prescribed by law, would be given effect “if the accused will have no hope of seeing even a short period of freedom again?”

But senior state advocate Lenro Badenhorst argued that Pangkaeker is “not a person that has benefited from suspended sentences and/or being on parole”.

“The accused has, by means of his historic conduct, demonstrated that [he] does not have respect for the law and he continued committing the most serious offences whilst on parole,” Bandenhorst submitted to the court.

In June last year, Singabakho Nxumalo, the spokesperson for the department of correctional services, told Mail & Guardian that Pangkaeker had been released on parole on 3 April 2013 “having completed additional interventions which were identified by the case management committee”.

Nxumalo said he was considered for parole because “he completed his minimum detention period and also completed a series of programmes and interventions, based on his sentence plan”.

Although some parolees continue with rehabilitation after being released from prison, it appears that Pangkaeker did not. Instead, he absconded his parole twice, during which he committed a series of sexual offenses, including the kidnap, rape and murder of Van Wyk in February 2020.

Concluding the state’s argument, Badenhorst said the accused “is a repetitive offender who indiscriminately targets young girls for sexual pleasure and therefore his moral blameworthiness is high”.

“The accused should be punished with the most severe punishment possible for his reprehensible actions. It is submitted that there are no reasonable prospects of rehabilitation for the accused,” he added.