Convicted rapist and murderer, Norman Afzal Simons will be released as early as this week, having been granted parole after 28 years in prison.
Currently serving his life sentence at Drakenstein Correctional Facility in Paarl, Simons will be released on strict parole conditions – which include 24-hour house arrest.
He will reside with family in Parow and is not allowed to leave the magistrate area.
While he is confined to his home, he will be allowed to seek employment, medical attention and visit the correctional services offices for programmes and meetings, among other conditions.
Under these conditions, he will not be allowed to enter Mitchell’s Plain where most of his alleged crimes occurred.
Although charged with 22 counts, he had only been convicted of one, the murder of Elroy van Rooyen (10).
The then-Grade 5 teachers at Alpine Primary School is believed to be responsible for raping, sodomising, and murdering via strangulation before burring his victims in shallow graves.
He derived his name from the modus of luring victims from train stations.
Due to the way the bodies of the 21 other victims aged between nine and early teens were found between 1986 and 1994, they were linked to Simons, although he had not been charged with any of them.
At an emotionally charged community engagement on Sunday 16 July, residents demanded the cases of these 21 boys be reopened.
“If it is not Norman, then it is someone else,” says Mitchell’s Plain Community Policing Forum chair, Norman Jantjes.
“We demand resources to be allocated so that the families of these 21 victims can get the justice they deserve,” says community activist and Mitchell’s Plain United Residents’ Association deputy chair, Michael Jacobs.
Both agree that Simons should be allowed a second chance and released on parole.
On the matter of these cold cases, Brig Jan Alexander, Mitchell’s Plain police station commander says the investigation of crimes against women and children is taken seriously by the police as an organisation.
Alexander, however, could not divulge any details on public record, he says, other than that it will not be closed.
Lawrence Venter, regional head of Corrections, says Simons would have been released, time served in 2019, had he not appealed his conviction in 1998.
His 25-year sentence, with an additional 10 to run concurrently was converted to a life sentence.
He applied for parole in 2019 after serving 25 years.
He was denied at that stage.
Venter says Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Ronald Lamola legally could only consider the conviction of one count, and not the 22 charges, but in this case, has consulted with all victims’ families.
