‘I Want To Look Him In The Eye'

After nine agonising years the man Dries believes murdered his daughter is to face justice

- Jana Van Der Merwe

It's been a long, hard nine years of watching and waiting, hoping and praying. Nearly a decade of pain and loss, anger and despair, of months and months spent driving around with a picture of his daughter’s alleged killer pasted in the back window of his car in case someone recognised him. And now, finally, Dries Venter has some form of closure – but the end of the nightmare comes with no happiness, just a sense of relief that justice may be done at last.

“It felt good seeing him in ankle cuffs,” the 69-year-old says. “It’s a relief that he’s back in the country but now old wounds are being opened again. Wounds that had just started scabbing over.”

Dries is the father of Andrea Venter, from Rustenburg who was murdered in her security complex in Fourways, Johannesburg, on 2 May 2011, allegedly by her then-boyfriend, Gerhard Jansen van Vuuren.

Dries’ beloved 25-year-old daughter was first assaulted with a knuckleduster before being stabbed 14 times with a pocketknife.

Gerhard was arrested and charged with the murder but then broke his bail conditions and fled to Brazil before his trial could begin in 2013.

He was arrested in early 2014 in Brazil for possession of a false passport and bribing a policeman (YOU, 16 January 2014). But a glitch in the Brazilian judicial system saw him freed in 2016 – which drove Dries to the brink of madness.

“For years I believed he may be back in Rustenburg,” Dries says. “People called me saying they thought they’d spotted him and I would follow up every lead.”