Bloemfontein - Bloemfontein is on edge. No one in the city, not even the police, is prepared to talk… not in public spaces and certainly not about the man accused of hacking off the genitals of women and girls and keeping the parts in his freezer.
“That man is dangerous. People are dying,” an employee at the provincial SAPS office on Charlotte Maxeke Street warns about Peter Frederiksen, the Danish gun shop owner now accused of genital mutilation.
A car guard near Frederiksen’s Impala gun shop hides herself away from the prying eyes of the public. She knows but won’t speak.
At Frederiksen’s shop, soldiers in uniform and civilians walk in and out.
A week ago, Frederiksen’s wife Tshidi was gunned down outside her home in Lesotho, where she had fled for protection. She was the main witness in the case. She was the one who could outline why her husband – the father of her two children – allegedly mutilated the private parts of 21 women, including herself. The body parts were then placed inside a freezer at their Langenhoven Park home in Bloemfontein.
As residents remain tight- lipped, they wait for Wednesday – that’s when they will know whether the magistrate will grant Frederiksen bail.
“Ons wag vir die dag. Poppe sal dans (We’re waiting for the day. All hell will break loose),” says a woman sitting with other women at a bus stop.
The women feel hurt by what has happened.
“What he did is bad. We are now scared of hiking (asking for lifts),” one quickly adds.
Not far from where they are congregated is Frederiksen’s townhouse, where he lived with his wife. Curtains are drawn. The garden is unkempt and children’s toys are scattered about.
Frederiksen is thought to have arrived in South Africa 10 years ago.
“Evil lurks in that house. It’s riddled with demons. Pray before you go there,” a police officer source warns.
Frightened neighbours this week signed a petition for him not to return.
“I’m scared. I don’t think I could live here if he were to come back,” says a neighbour who moved in days ago.
Grass cutters Malefetsana Realotsa and Tshiliso Mokoena have met Frederiksen in person. This was a year ago after he asked them to mow his lawn.
“He gave us a piece job. One look at the man and you would see that he is a tsotsi. The woman and children were always inside the house. He paid us with alcohol,” says Realotsa.
None of them knew what lurked inside his home, where he is thought to have illegally operated on many women. It is believed that most of them worked at his gun shop and are from Lesotho.
The process was simple. Frederiksen allegedly would ask the women to clean his house. Once there he would charm them, give them money, wine and have sex with them.
After that it’s believed he would introduce the idea of cutting their clitorises. They obliged.
“What would be done in the mountains for six months for female circumcision took Peter only two hours,” the officer says.
The case is described as the worst in the city since the 2009 Pakistani Mafia case in which seven Pakistanis were tried for poisoning a Lesotho businessman and murdering four rival gang members.
Police in Lesotho are said to be considering closing the docket in Tshidi’s murder case. But police in South Africa find this baffling.
“We know of all the suspects. Why would this be done?” the police source asks.
This week Frederiksen allegedly indicated through his advocate that he wants his two children back. They are in the care of social services.
It is unclear whether Frederiksen has any family members in the country.
But police make it clear that he is feared and well connected in Lesotho. Police indicate that he is wanted by their counterparts in Denmark for alleged illegal dealing in firearms.
As the sun sets in Bloemfontein, many think about Frederiksen’s victims.
“We don’t know whether they will now come forward since Tshidi has been killed,” a police officer says.
It’s believed the victims were all sedated before having their private parts cut off. They survived, but questions still remain on how they managed to walk or manage their pain immediately after their procedures.
A health expert believes it could have taken more than physical endurance to deal with the effects of being operated on in this way.
Gynecologist and obstetrician Peter Koll said that the clitoris has a good blood supply. Police found the 21 genital parts in marked packets in the man’s fridge.
“If one is unqualified it is difficult to imagine how that person would go about operating without causing permanent damage. I would expected that many of these women were in incredible pain. The risk of haemorrhaging would also have been very high,” said Koll.
There are no firm statistics of the extent of genital mutilation in South Africa.
Saturday Star
* E-mail your opinion to [email protected] and we will consider it for publication or use our Facebook and Twitter pages to comment on our stories. See links below.