Fanuel Makamu was born in 1977 and lived at Acornhoek, in eastern Limpopo province, South Africa. He was twenty-seven at his trial.
Between February and September 2000 he and another man, Henry Maela, attacked women in the Bushbuckridge area. The charge sheet said they approached women on the street and raped them, and that anyone who was with the women was at times shot dead. That is what the numbers in this case describe: ten rapes charged and six people killed, most of them the companions of the women who were attacked. South African reporting called him the Limpopo Serial Rapist.
Both men were arrested on September 14, 2000. Maela was shot dead by police during the arrest. Makamu was shot in the leg while trying to get away and was treated at Tintswalo hospital; a few days later he attempted to escape from custody, which became one of the charges against him.
He was tried alone on thirty-four charges and pleaded not guilty to every one. DNA from semen taken from three of the victims matched his.
The trial was held in the Nelspruit circuit of the Pretoria High Court, in Mpumalanga, more than a hundred kilometres from Bushbuckridge where the offences had been committed. A hundred and four witnesses gave evidence, travelling to Nelspruit each day. In May 2004 the judge, Willie Seriti, said he wanted to deliver judgment in the Bushbuckridge area itself, so that the witnesses would not have to make the journey again to hear the outcome: it would be more reasonable, he said, if it took place where the victims could attend court without wasting more money. The case was adjourned while a venue was found.
He was convicted and sentenced in July 2004 to eight life sentences and a further one hundred and sixty-five years. Reports of the sentencing described him as soft-spoken.
The victims are not named in anything accessible here, and no judgment is published. The count of six murders and ten rapes is what the charge sheet carried.