National police commissioner Riah Phiyega welcomed the sentence handed to Diepsloot child rapist and killer Ntokozo Hadebe.
"The Diepsloot community will be much safer with the accused jailed," she said in a statement.
High Court in Pretoria Judge Nico Coetzee sentenced Hadebe to nine life terms and 15 years' imprisonment for three murders, six rapes, and three kidnappings.
In September 2013 he murdered Anelisa Mkhonto, aged five. The next month he murdered Yonelisa Mali, aged two, and her cousin Zandile, aged three, in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg.
"We want to thank the team of investigators who have worked tirelessly around the clock until the arrest of Ntokozo," Phiyega said.
"We will also not forget to thank the members of the community who assisted with information that led to the arrest of the suspect at the time."
The court found Hadebe lured the girls from their homes and took them to his shack, where he raped them vaginally and anally before suffocating or strangling them.
He took Anelisa's body to a nearby rubbish dump, a plastic bag tied over her head. He left the bodies of the cousins in a public toilet.
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