My Instagram feed is littered with faces of women and children whom I’ve never met and will never get the chance to meet. They are dead, murdered at the hands of individuals — many of whom were their lovers, past and present.
I have never met them but I know their names; thanks to the fearless work of NPOs like Women for Change and Keep the Energy, which do their best in acknowledging those killed in acts of apparent femicide. Nomfundo Msibi, a 30-year-old woman who was allegedly stabbed to death by an ex-boyfriend at Gateway Theatre of Shopping in Durban. Deveney Nel, a 16-year-old girl whose body was found in a storeroom at her high school in Caledon. Peaceful Khoza, who was exhumed in a shallow grave at three years old — her body partially burnt, allegedly by a close friend, 18, of her family. Junior Mabandla, eight, found a day before Peaceful, suspected to be killed by the same man.
There are countless more. It feels like a never-ending list of women and children taken from their loved ones before their time. Some cases gain media attention, while the murder of others is known only to their community and loved ones. According to data collected by the SA Police Service (SAPS), almost 11 SA women are killed daily in the country — five times the global average. A third are killed by current or former intimate partners and half know their killer.
Femicide, as defined by the SA Medical Research Council (SAMRC), is the killing of girls and women and the most extreme form of gender-based violence (GBV). Ronel Koekemoer, survivor-centred GBV specialist, defines it further: “If you think about femicide, some people will argue about the definition. They’ll say there’s no need to say ‘femicide’, it’s just homicide ... but what a lot of feminist activists argue is that that’s not necessarily fair, because femicide is specifically the murder of women because they are women. It’s because of their gender identity that they are targeted and vulnerable to this kind of violence.”
The act of femicide is undeniably linked to the scourge of GBV and sexual violence in SA, as this is often where it starts. Statistics show that more than 50,000 rape cases are reported every year and almost 15,000 cases of abuse a quarter. This doesn’t take into account the cases that are unreported because many fear being victim blamed (when survivors are made to feel they are to blame for being abused or raped).
“From entering the police station and the first person that I spoke to, a woman detective, [asked] me, ‘Are you sure you weren’t drunk? Are you sure you’re not faking this? A lot of people do this to get attention. Where’s the proof? Why did you take 48 hours to come to us?’ I was being cross-examined like I had committed a crime. The assumption was that it didn’t happen,” says Robyn Keyser, founder of popular SA fashion brand Artclub and Friends. Robyn was raped by a stranger in 2014 in the Cape Town CBD after leaving a club to walk home.
I was one of the first people who Robyn called after the incident. She called me from the hospital to ask me to meet her there. I had no idea what had happened but it was clear it was serious. Robyn was taken to a hospital bed and I sat beside her, holding her hand. Just a year older than her, I had no idea how best to support my friend.
Robyn recognises that the crime committed took place over a decade ago and she remains hopeful that things have improved since then. She dropped the case after finding that it was almost impossible to access the street footage, though there were street cameras in the area. “I tried to do the brave thing and open the case but it became disheartening. It kind of felt like the police were so sure they weren’t going to catch this person, so they didn’t want to open a case and add to their rate of non-solved cases.”
Koekemoer confirms that police on the ground and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) take into account the chances of conviction. “If you report a rape at the police station and they open a docket, that docket goes to the prosecutor, who ... decides whether that case is winnable. That’s normal but what is really harrowing in the SA context is that there’s this unwritten performance agreement and targets within the NPA that say that your promotions and your bonuses are tied to the number of guilty convictions you get. So if you get cases that are more complicated or you don’t feel are as winnable because of the [high] evidentiary requirements ... the NPA refuses to prosecute those cases.”
Masechaba*, 32, has a similar reason she never opened a case against the man who raped her. Her brother knew the man and she says she felt he was someone she could trust after spending a weekend away with him and some friends in Durban. But she was forced to stay at his house for a night when they returned to Johannesburg. Despite her blatant refusal, he ended up having sex with her without her consent.
“It took me saying to him that I just had a miscarriage for him to stop,” Masechaba says. She then confided in a friend, who told her to report it to the police. “I wanted to report it but in the back of my mind I thought [that] we had been drinking, we were out. [My friend] said that it didn’t matter and I should go anyway. I went to Randburg police station but they weren’t helpful at all. They didn’t ask me if I wanted to do a rape kit. They asked what had happened and so I told them we had been drinking the whole day. Their response was, ‘But you were drinking, he was buying you expensive alcohol, what did you think was going to happen?’ So that pissed me off and they said I should think about it and come back [the next day].”
Masechaba did not return to the police station, as she felt that she was being blamed for “making him do it” by allowing him to buy alcohol for her. “I wish I had ... laid a case against him but I also know the consequences would be a lot harsher for me than they would be for him.”
Rape is not an isolated incident as it has profound effects on the individual psychologically and emotionally and on their relationships with others. “It is the kind of violence that’s very much [linked] to people’s personal relationships as well and people’s circumstances. I think that we don’t take that into account, we think about it as the moment of violence that determines how the person responds afterwards and that’s not fair; it’s not true of anybody” says Koekemoer. “Sexual violence often happens at the level of somebody you know so it’s complicated and it’s still very stigmatised around what you were wearing and if you were drinking. We still have those attitudes as a society even though the law says you’re not supposed to behave in that way.”
Masechaba, who is married and has a daughter, says her rape has affected the way she experiences sex, even within her marriage, despite her love and trust for her husband. For Robyn, there were both short- and long-term effects on her life psychologically and socially. “Short term, I experienced PTSD. I had to do a test when diagnosed where they checked the severity of how I’ve been affected by the trauma. There was a high level of violence involved. And I was all of a sudden diagnosed with severe anxiety, which is obviously understandable, but it’s quite interesting how your brain changes in an instant. I think the other mental health thing that you go through ... because it’s a topic that people are so uncomfortable talking about, people around you sort of attach it to your identity so if you want people to know what you’ve gone through you have to explain what has happened, which is also like secondary trauma because retelling the story retraumatises the brain for the first couple months following.”
She says this got her stuck in a Catch-22. “Even though you don’t want to be ashamed and you want to be able to talk about it ... you have ... bizarre reactions from people so I think it’s this weird experience of wanting to own what has happened and get the support you need but also now needing to navigate other people’s responses to your trauma, including family and friends.”
Robyn adds that her sense of safety was affected. “It wasn’t like paranoia, but I did become more conscious of the safety — whether that was in mental, emotional or social spaces. I suddenly was hyperaware of people’s facial expressions or even just driving at night became scary.”
GBV or sexual violence doesn’t always need to be “severe” to be recognised as traumatic. Often abuse leaves no physical marks, only scars on the minds and hearts of survivors.
Laura*, 32, is one such individual. It’s taken her years to recognise the emotional turmoil she experienced in a previous relationship for what it is: emotional abuse.
“Nick and I knew each other from when we were [teenagers] and we were just friends but I was besotted with this boy ... When I was 23, we got officially together. It was all hunky dory for a short time.”
Laura says that the emotional abuse started with him calling her names before progressing into more serious acts. “Then it turned into throwing things and he punched a hole through my door ... From then, it turned into actually throwing me. There was a lot of threatening to hurt me or kill me. The smallest things made him angry ... even just arriving a little late.”
Though she knows she shouldn’t blame herself, almost a decade later a large part of her still does. Laura says the relationship made her retreat into herself and she is still dealing with feelings of insecurity.
These three women tell different stories but they are stories many SA women share.
Robyn concludes with a tip for survivors. “If you don’t have support from within your friendships or family, there are so many support groups that can help you with information, resources and support. It’s hard to give advice on this topic, it’s shitty either way, no matter what you do.”
* Not their real names.
• If you have been raped or abused and need assistance, contact Rape Crisis on the 24-hour helpline: 0214479762 or Tears Foundation on 0800 083 277.
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