Who is this Woman of Steel? Does such a woman exist anywhere? By Okhule Dotwana
W
ho is this woman who can live peacefully in one of the most notorious crime hot spots in the Eastern Cape? A woman made of steel. A woman who cannot be harmed. Does she exist anywhere in South Africa? She stands serenely along Route 67, near the road in Central, one of the most dangerous places in Nelson Mandela Bay. Who is she? Does she exist anywhere in South Africa? During the last five years alone, countless violent crimes have been committed against women. A young woman crawled her way out of a river, where she had been left to die. As she walked around in search of help, she held her head down close to her throat to try to stop the bleeding. She had been gang raped on her way back from work by three men, who slit her throat and threw her in a nearby river, thinking she was dead. Fortunately, these men were found, arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. A woman, who had been abused by her husband for a number of years, died in hospital after what would be a fatal beating. Her husband came home and was set off by something insignificant. He was beating her when the housekeeper rushed into the room and tried to pull the man away from his wife. He left the house and returned almost immediately with a bottle of paraffin, poured it over his wife and set her on fire. By this time, the woman’s teenage child was also in the room together with the housekeeper, trying to put out the flames. The man was never prosecuted. In the middle of the night, a man broke into a house and raped a twoyear-old child. When the mother of the
child walked in on him, he ran off. Word spread about this man, and eventually he got drunk with a couple of friends in a bar and bragged about raping a child “as small as a puppy.” The people in the bar turned him over to the police. Even though there was the child’s mother, who saw him, and the people in the bar who heard him confess, there apparently wasn’t enough evidence to keep him behind bars, and he is walking free today. A teenage girl was feeling ill so her mother suggested she go to a traditional healer who would give her something to make her feel better. When she arrived at the man’s house, the girl was told to undress. She felt uneasy, but this man was a healer, and she did not think there was a reason to fear him. However, he raped her repeatedly. He eventually was sentenced to life imprisonment. A man saw his stepdaughter leaving a boy’s house early in the morning. Knowing how strict her mother is, the stepfather told the child that if she did not sleep with him, he would tell her mother that she slept over at a boy’s house. The teenage girl was coerced into sleeping with the stepfather. After the stepfather was found out, the case went to court, but the judge decided not to prosecute him, stating that he is the breadwinner of the house and the family would suffer if he went to jail. Thus, in addition to the trauma of being raped by this man, the girl had to live in the same house as her rapist. The lot of lesbian women is even worse. They get attacked simply for being lesbians. South Africa has seen an upsurge of “corrective rape” cases, where lesbian women are gang raped by men who believe this will “cure” them of homosexuality. These are the realities of many women and children in South Africa and the world. The woman who stands secure and free from harm along Route 67 really does not exist. She is a myth. Women and children are not safe outside. They are not safe at school or at work. They are not safe around people they should trust, like their friends, their doctors and their priests. They are not safe even in their own homes, where they walk on eggshells around their husbands or live in fear of being molested by their fathers. Many women in South Africa do not feel secure enough to stand where they please or go where they want.
This is why, every year in South Africa, a campaign is run called “The 16 Days of Activism for no violence against women and children.” It runs every year from 25 November to 10 December to bring awareness to the 16 kinds of abuse that are committed against women and children worldwide. I would love to be made out of steel like the woman on Route 67. To be safe from harm. To walk out from the house trusting that no one will attack me. To watch the news or read the paper or have a conversation that has nothing to do with abused women and children. Does such a woman exist anywhere in the world?
Photo by Chris Allen
She stands serenely along Route 67, one of the most dangerous places in Nelson Mandela Bay.
2013 Reflections on Freedom
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