Karoo farmer convicted of raping au pairs hires Matlala’s lawyer

Convicted Karoo farmer Louis Lategan has hired Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala’s lawyer, delaying his sentencing for trafficking and raping young women he employed as au pairs by three weeks.

Advocate Annelene van den Heever, who is defending Matlala on attempted murder charges in the Johannesburg High Court, was appointed to represent Lategan on Monday.

Lategan was due to be sentenced in the Makhanda High Court on Monday, but the case was postponed to October 12 so that Van den Heever can place herself on record.

Judge Judith Roberson convicted the 42-year-old livestock farmer on 21 of the 22 counts he faced on Wednesday last week.

She found him guilty of trafficking all six of the young women he brought to his farm in the Xamdeboo, formerly Aberdeen, district between 2020 and 2023, and of raping three of them.

He was acquitted of raping two more and convicted of assaulting them instead.

He was acquitted on a further rape charge, involving a minor, at the close of the state's case.

Lategan was also found guilty on three counts of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, involving children aged 11, 12 and 13, on a further count of assaulting a child, on two counts of assaulting an adult farm worker and on two counts of the unlawful possession of ammunition.

The women were aged between 18 and 24 and had left school without being able to find work, and each of them travelled hundreds of kilometres from home to the farm believing she had been hired to look after Lategan's two children.

State advocate Nickie Turner told the court he gave them drinks laced with a drug, and that they woke up in his bed with no recollection of what had happened.

Lategan denied drugging anyone and told the court every one of the women had slept with him willingly.

One of the six took her own life in February 2022, one gave birth to his child and another lost a pregnancy while she was living on the farm.

Life imprisonment is the prescribed minimum sentence on the trafficking and rape counts, because the women were trafficked and raped more than once.

The state has said it will also ask for Lategan's name to be entered on the National Register of Sex Offenders.