South Africa: Gang Raped for being Gay

By LIZ HAZELTON   dailymail.co.uk

Gang-raped, beaten and stabbed 25 times, she was the lesbian activist and football star whose murder blew open South Africa's hate crime epidemic. 

But more than two years after the death of Eudy Simelane, the government has done nothing to halt the barbaric sex attacks dubbed 'corrective' rape.

Campaigners say that ten women are now assaulted every week by men who claim to be 'curing' their victims of homosexuality.

The attacks are often accompanied by such horrifying violence that women are left permanently scarred - or fatally injured.

Attack: Zukiswa Gaca, 20, tried to commit suicide after being raped by a man who had asked her out

Zukiswa Gaca is still struggling to understand how an ordinary night out ended with her trying to kill herself.

She had been drinking with friends in Khayelitsha township, just 25 miles from the cosmopolitan Cape Town.

Speaking to CNN's, Untold Stories, the 20-year-old described how she had been asked out by a 'friendly' man she met in a bar.

'I told the guy that no I'm a lesbian so I don't date guys,' she says.

'He said to me, "I understand. I've got friends that are lesbians, that's cool, I don't have a problem with that."'

He was lying.

At the home of one of his friends, where they had gone after the bar, he attacked her.

''He said to me, "you know what? I hate lesbians and I'm about to show you that you are not a man, as you are treating yourself like a man,' she continues.

Home: Zukiswa had moved to Khayelitsha township, near Cape Town, because she believed it would be more tolerant

'I tried to explain "I'm not a man. I never said I'm a man, I'm just a lesbian".

'And he said, "I will show you that I am a man and I have more power than you."'

He raped her. Afterwards she went to the nearest railway line and lay down on the tracks.

A train was just 100 metres away when a passerby pulled her out of its path and saved her life.

He was questioned and then released. Eighteen months on, there is no sign that he will ever be brought before a court.

She went to the police and reported the rape, even accompanying officers to identify her attacker.

Zukiswa speaks of her ordeal with extraordinary composure. Occasionally she brushes her fine-boned face before the tears can fall.  

'Being a lesbian in Khayelitsha is like you are being treated like an animal, like some kind of an alien or something,' she says.

'But trust me, I will kill the guy. The police know they can't arrest the rapist but they would arrest me if I do that. I would rot in the jail for maybe the rest of my life for killing a rapist.'

The deeper tragedy is that that terrible night in December 2009 was not the first time Zukiswa was raped for being gay.

She left her home in the Eastern Cape when she was just 15 after being attacked by another villager. Her belief was that the outskirts of Cape Town would be safer. She could not have been more wrong.

It is difficult to tell the full scale of the problem in South Africa. Police do not keep statistics on corrective rape and nor do they view the act as a hate crime.

In a recent report, Human Rights Watch concluded that attitudes towards homosexuality in South Africa have actually got worse over the last 20 years.

This is particularly surprising in a country where gay marriage is legal and the rights of homosexuals are enshrined in the constitution. On the surface, it appears to be one of the most tolerant nations on the continent

That image is totally undermined by the appalling catalogue of attacks on homosexuals.

Among the most distressing was a woman whose 13-year-old twin daughters were raped because she was gay.  One of the girls later committed suicide. 

Siphokazi Mthathi, the South African director of Human Rights Watch, partly blames the problem on deeply embedded sexism in society. 

‘We've failed to make it understood that there is a price for rape,’ she tells CNN. ‘There is still a strong sense among men that they have power over women, women's bodies and there's also a strong sense that there's not going to be consequences because most often there are no consequences.’