""Every day I am told that they are going to kill me, that they are going to rape me and after they rape me I'll become a girl," Zakhe Sowello from Soweto, told the paper. "When you are raped you have a lot of evidence on your body. But when we try and report these crimes nothing happens, and then you see the boys who raped you walking free on the street."
Corrective rape is a fact of life in many African countries; the purpose, victims are told, is to "turn you into a real African woman." Apparently real women are heterosexual. In one case a victim was told by her mother that "'this is what happens to girls like you ." Part of the problem, though, is not simply intolerance of lesbians - it is also a fundamental intolerance of women in general. One of the victims, Kekeletso Khena, said:
"It's the most disturbing. It boils down to the fact that you as a woman have a role to be a wife, mother and subordinate to your husband. If you are lesbian you are not fulfilling those roles."
I would dare to say that it is more than most disturbing, it is evil, and an evil that is being tolerated by a system that has chosen to turn a blind eye to what is going on. On Friday the Daily Mail reported:
"Support groups claim an increasingly macho political environment led to inaction over attacks.
A statement released by South Africa's national prosecuting authority said: 'While hate crimes – especially of a sexual nature – are rife, it is not something that the South African government has prioritised as a specific project.'
Human rights and equality campaigners are hoping the reaction to Simelane's death and the trial of the three men accused of her rape and murder will help put an end to the attacks.
Laura Turquet, ActionAid’s women’s rights coordinator, said: 'So-called "corrective" rape is yet another grotesque manifestation of violence against women, the most widespread human rights violation in the world today.
'These crimes continue unabated and with impunity, while governments simply turn a blind eye."
We cannot and must not turn a blind eye to this, if we do we brush aside questions of what it is to be a woman in the 21st century. Even in the comfortable west suspicion and discomfort about issues of sexuality still run strong and deep under the surface. That you might be healed from your "condition", is not an unheard of response and possibly especially in some Christian groups. That is why I really appreciated this poem "The Straight pill" that was sent to me by a friend recently.
Issues of sexuality demand that we enter into grey areas, they demand that we doubt ourselves and our perhaps once firmly held beliefs as we take a good long look in the mirror and ask what it means to be fully human.
There are no easy answers!
But brutality is not an option that we can ignore, and neither is turning a blind eye to those who have chosen to turn a blind eye. So come on South Africa, wake up and speak up, for these crimes ( and that is what they are) deserve a far higher priority than you have chosen to give to them....
I will end with the prayer by Nicola Slee who was writing in response to Phyllis Trible's book Texts of Terror ( a book which looks at some of the terrible deeds carried out against women in the Bible) Nicola Slee exhorts us to continue to read and not to dismiss them, and to use the horror we feel to fuel our prayers. I posted this again only a few days ago in response to another case of violation of womens rights and bodies. I make no apologies for repeating it!
Should we remember Hagar, Tamar, Jephthah's daughter, and
Lot's?
Should we tell of their wretched lives to our daughters?
Should we speak on our lips the tales of torture, misery, abuse and
violence?
Would we do better to consign them to silence?
We will listen, however painful the hearing,
for still there are women the world over
being raped
being whipped
being sold into slavery
being shamed
being silenced
being beaten
being broken
treated as worthless
treated as refuse.
Until there is not one last woman remaining
who is a victim of violence.
We will listen and we will remember.
we will rehearse the stories and we will renounce them.
we will weep and we will work for the coming of the time
when not one baby will be abandoned because of her gender
not one girl will be used against her will for another's pleasure
not one young woman will be denied the chance of an education
not one mother will be forced to abandon her child
not one woman will have to sell her body
not one crone will be cast off by her people to die alone.
Listen then, in sorrow.
Listen in anger,Listen to the texts of terror.
And let us commit ourselves to working for a world
in which such deeds may never happen again...
WE MUST NOT, WE CANNOT BE SILENT!!!
