Hate crimes: The rise of 'corrective' rape in South Africa - Rape Outcry

15Hate crimes: The rise of “corrective” rape in South AfricaCase study: Phumla, Soweto, Johannesburg“In South Africa there is no safe space forwomen, there is nowhere you can be safefrom rape. ‘Corrective’ rape is a big problemhere because if you’re a lesbian in Soweto,guys see you as a threat and something thatshould be wiped off the face of the earth.We get insults every day, beatings if wewalk alone, you are constantly remindedthat you are a bitch, that you deserve to beraped, they yell, if I rape you then you will gostraight, that you will buy skirts and start tocook because you will have learned how tobe a real woman.Then there are others who believe that weare all virgins and so if they have sex with us,we are free from diseases. They believe thatit is their right to have sex with any womanout there, straight or lesbian.When it happened to me, ‘corrective’ rapefelt like the worst kind of violence thatsomeone could have inflicted on my person.It happened when two lesbian friends andI were driving home from soccer practicewith two guys we knew from the township.Instead of taking us home they took us to aplace out of town and when they stopped thecar we tried to get away but one of them wastoo fast for me. He grabbed me and draggedme into a house where there was another guywaiting. All the time they were telling me thatI needed to be taught a lesson, that I wasn’ta man I was a girl and that I needed to startacting like one. He said that out of all thelessons I would have in my life, this one is aclassic. And it was a classic.Afterwards I felt weak and I felt stupid. Aslesbians we know we are in danger but we stilllet those guys drive us home. So I didn’t reportit to the police, because I felt like I couldn’t.I think the violence is getting worse. Just lastDecember I knew of a lesbian couple in abar near my home. They were out with boyswho were their friends. At the end of the nighther girlfriend was killed and she was raped. Ibelieve this happens every day. The fact thereis no justice means that people think they canget away with it because nobody cares.”Phumla in Soweto, Johannesburg.“I blamed myself for the rape. I didnot tell anyone, not my family or thefriends with me that night.”Phumla (right) with her girlfriend Atarcia.