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Six-year-old Stacey Adams did not need many prayers for her sins to be forgiven, because she did nothing wrong, Moulana Toyer Leak said after her funeral prayers at the Al-Masjiduth Thaalith Mosque in Mitchells Plain on Tuesday.
He said the way the little girl died was terrible. Stacy was found in a shallow grave after she disappeared from home.
"But we were honoured to have made salaah (prayers) for a person who was sinless," said Leak.
"She did not know what happened to her, she did not know why it was happening."
He said he hoped that the person who killed her would repent and warned parents to be vigilant with their children, especially during the school holidays, to protect them from predators.
Stacy was found dead in nearby De Larey Street in Eastridge on Sunday, in her first grave – a shallow hole dug next to a Wendy house on the property her mother Stacey-Lee lived on with her boyfriend. Police have not revealed how she died and this could emerge during the first appearance of a suspect in the Mitchells Plain Magistrate's Court on Wednesday.
He is understood to be the mother's boyfriend and the couple apparently had apparently had a row on Friday night. He is expected to be charged with murder.
The child lived with her grandmother Laeeqah Adams across the road but shuttled between the properties, less than 100m from each other.
There was so much anger over her death that the house police were questioning the suspect in was petrol bombed. On Monday one of the two Wendy houses on the property where she was found dead was tipped over. It was later broken down by angry locals.
Western Cape safety MEC Dan Plato said outside the mourners' house that the girl may even have been raped.
Volunteers from the Mitchells Plain Crisis Forum (MPCF), the Western Cape safety department's Walking Bus, which accompanies children to school and back on foot, and other community organisations held hands and formed a protective ring around the front gate to give the family privacy as they said their final goodbyes in Stacey's grandmother's lounge, in accordance with Muslim rites.
The sounds of prayer drifted outside as adults and children waited to walk with her body to the mosque in nearby Beacon Valley.
"We are tired of all our children being murdered," said MPCF police liaison officer Denise Deelman.
The forum was borne out of a regular need for search parties to find missing children, among them Courtney Pieters, Rene Roman and Stacha Arends.
MPCF secretary Faizel Brown said perpetrators such as Stacey's killer should be removed from society for good.
However, he implored communities not to touch crime scenes in future, no matter how angry they were, to make sure no evidence was destroyed and that the perpetrator had no chance of escaping justice.
After prayers at Stacey's grandmother's house, she was carried aloft down the roads of Eastridge and across fields until she reached the mosque.
After the ceremony, the Moulana again urged parents to take care of their children because there were people who preyed on them.
"Wherever they walk, they are not safe," he said.
He said the government was failing society, and suggested that it might be time to bring back the gallows.
"The punishment (jail) is like going into a holiday inn," he said.
Meanwhile, when Police Minister Bheki Cele visited the home amid a fraught atmosphere on Monday, he said it was believed that the perpetrator was high on drugs, but this needed to be validated.
READ: Police minister told to 'f*k*f' after visiting family of murdered Mitchells Plain child
Social development MEC Albert Fritz was among those who offered condolences on Monday, and then on Tuesday conducted a walkabout with social workers and NGOs in Westridge, also in Mitchells Plain, to drop off pamphlets on how to get into a drug rehabilitation programme if necessary.
He said the department had treatment facilities and worked closely with NGOs to help wean people off drugs, and to keep them off.
He urged anybody in need to contact one of their centres.
