Sex pest teacher: Mom speaks out:
In 2022, 19-year-old Julio Mordoh opened up about being sexually molested by a teacher at St John’s Preparatory School in Johannesburg. Three weeks after giving his statement to the police, he took his own life.
Mordoh was one of more than 15 boys who were allegedly sexually groomed and violated by a teacher at the school between 2007 and 2013. Most of the boys were aged 10 to 12 years.
“My boy couldn’t withstand the trauma. He took his life three weeks after he gave a statement to the police, and his gift to the other survivors is that he’s been the face so that the other survivors don’t have to face any more trauma,” Julio’s mother, Teresa Mordoh, told the Mail & Guardian this week.
“They are youngsters, they want to get on with their lives, and it has already taken four years to get to this point. We’re going to start losing people who are coming forward because it’s just taking too long. That is also not okay.”
The 52-year-old former teacher — who was employed at the school from 2002 to 2014 — made his first appearance at the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg this week on 25 counts of indecent assault and sexual assault. The case was postponed to 20 November for pre-trial, and Judge Rean Strydom extended the accused’s bail.
A past student registered the first case against the former teacher in 2021 for sexual grooming and indecent assault in Johannesburg, but the case was later withdrawn and moved to Marikana, where more alleged victims from different provinces came forward. The matter was eventually centralised in Johannesburg after more students, including some from other schools, reported incidents.
In February 2025, the former teacher was arrested on fresh charges of indecent assault dating back to 2005–2006.
All cases are now consolidated into 25 counts and will be heard at the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg, investigating officer Heila Niemand told the M&G.
“It took us four years to get to today. To actually have the matter heard in high court without going piecemeal and to bring it all together and have the gravitas that it needs to have to drive change,” Mordoh said.
“I was hoping that there would at least be a reconsideration of the bail today [Wednesday].”
Representatives from the Teddy Bear Clinic, Women and Men Against Child Abuse, and STOPS gathered at the court on Wednesday to support the survivors’ families and raise awareness about the widespread problem of child and sexual abuse in South Africa.
Mordoh said the case was not only about justice for the victims but also about upholding the Child Protection Act and ensuring that children have safe spaces where they feel empowered to speak out.
Reflecting on her late son’s experience, she said he had initially been too afraid to come forward because he believed something was wrong with him for being targeted by the teacher — until he learned that other boys had suffered the same abuse.
She said the accused appeared to have deliberately singled out and isolated the children he targeted. She added that she continues to hear from former pupils who were molested by him and now feel ready to speak, but she believes there are still others who remain silent out of fear or shame.
The school initiated action against the man after the first charges were laid in 2021, and as more former students shared their experiences of being fondled by the teacher, who also exposed himself to them on school premises or during camp trips.
Many also reported repeat assaults by the accused, who was employed as a teacher and water-polo coach at the school. He taught Maths, Science, and Sex Education, and was also the head of Pastoral Care and of Darragh House, while coaching water polo and rock climbing. He also managed the explorer club, where learners were taken on camping and rock-climbing trips. The accused stayed on the school’s premises.
Other students also told lawyers that the accused touched them inappropriately when they sought medical care from him or forced them to swim naked with him during school trips. In some cases, he would sit next to the boys on the bus or sleep next to them on camping trips and touch them inappropriately.
A private investigator, acting on behalf of these former students, laid criminal charges against the individual concerned with the South African Police Service Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit on 15 November 2021. The school also reported the former teacher to the South African Council of Educators and the Anglican Safe Church Unit through the office of the Bishop of Johannesburg.
The school told the M&G it could not comment on the matter at this stage.
“As this matter is the subject of ongoing legal proceedings, the school is constrained from commenting further on the case,” it said.
After the case was sent to the council for review, presiding judge Johan Froneman was appointed to review the management of incidents of concern, analyse complaints against the former teacher, report on the conduct and involvement of staff and systems.
The judge absolved the school of any responsibility for the events that took place on its premises, saying that other teachers and the headmaster could not have known what was happening, nor did they try to cover it up when they found out about it years later.
“Judge Froneman noted that the school had had no knowledge of these incidents of alleged sexual abuse prior to the allegations emerging in late 2021,” a 2022 summary document seen by the M&G stated.
“The review records that no complaint against this former Prep teacher was ever made by any boys at the Prep during this period, nor by any parents. Two complaints were taken by Prep staff to their head during the former teacher’s tenure at the Prep, and these were appropriately dealt with by the Prep head at the time.”
“When the council first became aware of the allegations in October 2021, some 10 to 15 years later, it commendably took immediate steps to investigate the allegations and reported the matters to the police and prosecuting authorities,” Froneman said in the documents.
“I could not find or discern any kind of cover-up on the part of the staff or the then headmasters about the events. Tellingly, it was [the former Prep Headmaster] himself who, upon being approached by a parent in October 2021 about what she had been told by her son, immediately contacted the school about it,” he added.
The school has since undertaken training of staff members to recognise any potential warning signs of grooming or sexual and other abuse of students within the whole school community and has outlined policies, including for recruitment, to ensure such incidents do not reoccur. In a similar case, a former assistant water polo coach at Parktown Boys’ High School in Johannesburg was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2018 for sexual assault and an additional three years for common assault. Collan Rex initially faced 327 charges but pleaded guilty to 144 counts of sexual assault and 12 counts of common assault. The court acquitted him of some of the charges.
Phase two of MBDA hybrid security programme on track:
By MBDA Chief Executive Officer, Anele Qaba.
It was a little over 11 months, on 12 November 2024, when the MBDA unveiled a state-of-the-art security CCTV control centre. Hailed by stakeholders as a boost in the fight against crime, the technology-infused security programme combines feet on the ground through tactical response vehicles and a network of high fibre-optic security cameras. The system capabilities include facial recognition, wide angle pan features and licence plate recognition software, and are all connected to the Tramways building.
Normally, one would not publicise the modus operandi in crime detection, because doing so may ultimately lead to the subversion of such interventions. However, as an accountable entity, we must inform the residents of Nelson Mandela Bay of the initiatives we are making to get our mandate areas safe to live, work and play.
The CCTV control unveiling concluded phase one of the project, with sites connected to this hub including Stanley Street, St Georges Park, Parliament Street and Western Road – where we monitor vehicles, businesses and all illegal activities such as muggings, drugs and contraband trading.
Also, in the Gqeberha CBD, we continue to monitor the Campanile, Fort Frederick, Donkin Reserve and Athenaeum, and closer to South End, we have installations at St Peters Rainbow Village and the Tramways. All these sites are provided with coverage against vandalism, protect tourists and visitors and reassure residents that their safety is a primary concern.
The MBDA also has the Helenvale Resource Centre under CCTV monitoring. This community facility was the hub of the KfW Safety and Peace through Urban Upgrading (SPUU) programme and continues to play a role in the activities of the MBDA as we wrap up. Closer to Bayworld and part of the expanded programme, Happy Valley has CCTV coverage, where we monitor the visitors to the valley and public infrastructure in that area.
Fast forward 11 months since the unveiling of the CCTV control room, all these initiatives are bearing fruit. The hybrid security approach has contributed significantly to the prevention of theft and petty crimes in the areas where there is coverage.
Specifically, the use of cameras and tactical response has led to confiscation of illegal substances, recovery of stolen vehicles aided by the automatic number plate recognition technology, identification and the arrest of card scammers in Central and at the Beachfront. The cameras in Central have also been useful in dealing with illegal dumping of rubbish and building rubble on street corners, identifying illegal fishing culprits off Shark Rock Pier, illegal drag racing and the retrieval of stolen personal goods such as wallets and laptops from vehicle break-ins.
What has been encouraging is the collaboration with the city’s new joint operations centre at the South End fire station that now has access to the feed from the Tramways, expanding coverage and improving crime prevention, detection and mitigation. The ability of the Metro Police’s access to these feeds allows them to deploy their resources into other areas of the city and thereby reducing duplication and leveraging resources.
Phase two is an expansion of the CCTV security infrastructure programme and is currently at 45% implementation. Once completed, phase two will be linked to the MBDA Central Control Room at the Tramways. This phase will add 25 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), 30 Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) and 100 fixed cameras and include thermal and day/night capabilities. While phase two adds more capacity in Strand Street and Govan Mbeki Avenue.
In Strand Street and Govan Mbeki Avenue, repairs and replacement on fibre manholes with fibre ducts is under way, and power supply restoration and repairs to existing CCTV poles are in progress.
In the vicinity of the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium Lake Precinct, trenching for fibre-optic and power infrastructure is complete; three CCTV poles are to be installed; and municipal electrical power supply restoration for CCTV poles is in progress.
Out in Helenvale, Uitenhage Street, Russel Road and Rose Streets, the repairing of the fibre link route infrastructure, damaged CCTV poles and manholes will get under way soon, as the project progresses. For patrons and visitors to the Tramways building, parking bays and the Lower Valley Road, all installations are complete and CCTV cameras are loaded and added to the MBDA Tramways Control Room for operators to view and monitor.
As we progress with phase two of the CCTV security programme to create spaces that are conducive to live, work and play, we are mindful that crime patterns are constantly changing and that is why in July and August 2025, we piloted a drone security project. The deployment of highly trained Civil Aviation Authority certified pilots and operations controllers worked in collaboration with security stakeholders like South African Police Service, Nelson Mandela Bay Metro Police and the Department of Forestry and Fisheries.
A total of 306 drone flights were conducted with nearly 6 000 minutes of flight duration. From these, a total of 42 criminal activity detections were made and 147 suspects identified. To date, 16 arrests were made as a direct result of the combined drone and tactical response mobilisation. As crime adapts to these measures, entities such as the MBDA must stay ahead of the game and continue to invest in the safety of citizens, tourists and businesses.
Paris, death destination of ambassadors past and present:
Amid the costly ANC-style state funeral for its fallen loyalist and deployed diplomat, Nathi Mthethwa, held at his homestead in KwaMbonambi on KwaZulu-Natal’s lush green north coast, the moment calls for reflection.
His headline-making death in Paris — the city of liberty, lights and love — should remind the nation that two ANC ambassadors have now died in the French capital in four decades, lest we forget the 1988 assassination of Dulcie September, the ANC’s chief representative in France.
The envoy was given a right royal farewell — ANC personalities and mourners dressed in black, with dark sunglasses, dignified until journey’s end for one of the most controversial politicians of the time, whose activism began humbly as one of five ANC Youth League members in KZN 30 years ago.
His death, suspected to be suicide, raised painful questions. Why are our liberation-era leaders — those who fought for justice and dignity — dying in such tragic solitude? The parallels are haunting.
All roads led to the state funeral on the northern flank near the heartland of Zululand last Sunday. Grieving family members, the community and the ANC remain suspicious about the bizarre death. Family members, including the late ambassador’s son, performed a traditional “fetching of the spirit” ritual at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Paris, where Mthethwa’s body was found last week.
According to French prosecutors, the 58-year-old former cabinet minister and South Africa’s ambassador to France died after falling from the 22nd floor of the hotel. Police investigations have reportedly found no evidence of foul play.
As the envoy’s body was airborne to bring it back to South Africa, controversial former police minister Bheki Cele had cast doubt on the casket. He cautioned against premature conclusions at a memorial service in Pinetown, near the envoy’s political stamping ground of Clermont.
Cele, describing himself as having “expertise”, questioned the speed and certainty of the French investigation: “You cannot just conclude that someone willingly jumped from a building only 12 hours after their death — it doesn’t make sense. What kind of investigators are those? Are they sangomas? They claim a phone was found elsewhere and that he sent a message before 11. Are we supposed to believe no one saw him jump?”
Cele’s remarks reflect growing unease within political and diplomatic circles as both South African and French authorities continue to piece together the final moments of a man who served at the heart of government and diplomacy.
French prosecutors confirmed that the 58-year-old former police minister had a fall from the 22nd floor, detecting “no signs of foul play”.
Back to my backstory: Paris has always held a special place in my journalistic journey. In the 1980s, it was my second stopover during my inaugural media mission abroad, after Britain, Europe later, and newly-independent Zimbabwe.
While working for the Sunday Tribune and the Argus Group, I was assigned to cover the UN’s inaugural global conference to end apartheid-era Springbok sports tours — an event spearheaded in London by my self-exiled physical education teacher, Sam Ramsamy.
As the first journalist of colour in the Argus Foreign Bureau on Fleet Street, I filed dispatches and photographs that were published across multiple titles, marking a milestone in both media representation and international solidarity against apartheid.
Five years later, I returned with my family, fresh from a sabbatical at City University of London, carrying an international journalism qualification denied to me by the apartheid regime and Rhodes University.
Last week, as Spring dawned, the 5am news bulletin stopped me mid-step en route to my first cup of piping hot coffee. The headline was devastating: South Africa’s ambassador to France, Nathi Mthethwa, had died under tragic and mysterious circumstances in Paris.
Only days earlier, he had presented his credentials to the principality of Monaco, home to Princess Charlene, South Africa’s Olympic swimming champion. Now, he was gone — his body found in the courtyard of the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile, reportedly, he plunged to his death.
The shock reverberated across South Africa. Mthethwa, a former minister of police, and of sports and arts and culture, was a prominent figure in the ANC and a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle.
His death, suspected to be suicide, raised painful questions: Why are our liberation-era leaders — those who fought for justice and dignity — dying in such tragic solitude?
The parallels are haunting: During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, ANC minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson was found dead at her Rondebosch home in June 2023. Her passing followed allegations of extortion involving a R600 000 bribe linked to the Section 194 Inquiry into suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane. In her final interview, Joemat-Pettersson reportedly said, “I have no life and no future,” a chilling expression of emotional distress. Her death remains under investigation, but the shadow of suicide looms large.
Turn back the clock to 1988, when in London I received the heartbreaking news of Dulcie September’s assassination in Paris. She was gunned down while serving as the ANC’s chief representative in France. Now, decades later, another ANC stalwart has died in the same city — this time not by an assassin’s bullet, but by a fall that has left more questions than answers.
The French police are renowned for their methodical approach to investigating deaths, murders and assassinations. Their clinical precision was evident in the handling of Princess Diana’s fatal crash in 1997. Now, they are tasked with piecing together the final moments of a South African diplomat whose life spanned from the trenches of struggle to the corridors of power.
Mthethwa’s journey began in Clermont and Klaarwater, outside Durban. His rise through the ANC ranks culminated in ministerial appointments under presidents Kgalema Motlanthe, Jacob Zuma, and Cyril Ramaphosa. His KwaBonambi homestead, once a symbol of political stature, became a gathering place for mourners — family, comrades and community members united in grief and disbelief.
The news of his death travelled swiftly. French newspaper Le Parisien was among the first to report the incident, noting that Mthethwa had been reported missing by his wife after she received a distressing message. His body was later found at the foot of the Hyatt Regency in the Porte Maillot district. International outlets, including Reuters France, Sky News, Daily Star, and The Mirror UK echoed the report, citing French police sources. Back home, the Mail & Guardian, IOL, and EWN added tributes and political context.
But beneath the shock lies a deeper reckoning.
The Wall, the Mercedes-Benz, and the Whispered Orders: Nathi Mthethwa and the Architecture of State Capture: Once hailed as a loyal foot soldier of the ANC, Mthethwa now stands as a spectral figure in South Africa’s long and painful confrontation with State Capture. His sudden death in Paris, far from the dusty corridors of power he once patrolled, casts a pall over the unfolding Madlanga Commission inquiry — and raises uncomfortable questions about accountability, memory and the cost of silence.
Mthethwa’s name surfaced repeatedly in the Zondo Commission, tethered to allegations of personal enrichment via Crime Intelligence slush funds. A luxury Mercedes-Benz and a R200 000 wall built around his KwaZulu-Natal home became symbols not just of excess, but of a deeper rot: the repurposing of state resources for private comfort and political shielding.
But it is the testimony emerging from the Madlanga Commission that cuts closer to the bone. KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s account of political interference — of being summoned by Mthethwa and instructed to halt the prosecution of then SAPS crime intelligence head Richard Mdluli — is not merely a footnote in bureaucratic dysfunction. It is a chilling reminder of how intelligence structures were weaponised to protect allies and suppress dissent.
Mkhwanazi’s words, “The worst political interference I have ever experienced,”— echo like a warning shot across the bow of democratic accountability. They speak to a culture where loyalty trumped legality and where ministers blurred the line between governance and patronage.
The tragedy, of course, is not just institutional. It is human. The whistleblowers who risked careers and reputations to speak truth to power. The citizens whose safety was compromised by a politicised police force. The journalists who chased leads through a fog of obfuscation. And now, SAPS investigators, commissioned by acting Police Minister, Feroz Cachalia, must still piece together a puzzle whose central figure has exited the stage.
His death may close one chapter, but it must not seal the archive. The Madlanga Commission has a duty not only to expose, but to illuminate — to show how the architecture of State Capture was built brick by brick, wall by wall, whisper by whisper.
South Africa deserves more than catharsis. It deserves a consequence.
Marlan Padayachee, member of the SA National Editors’ Forum, is a veteran political, foreign and diplomatic correspondent from South Africa’s transition to democracy and a recipient of awards, including from the British Council and the USIS International Visitor and newly appointed co-chair: Media Council of Gopio International, representing 35 million in the 35-nation Indian diaspora. He is a freelance journalist.
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