July 17, 2007

"Tomboys" who "wanted to be raped," and are often killed

Posted by kameelah rasheed at 12:01AM

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South Africa is home to one of the world's most progressive and inclusive constitutions with an unmatched commitment to the human rights of the LGBT community. The nation is also one of only five countries to legalize same-sex marriages. But, South Africa is also home to lesbian killings, rapes and tortures -- all acts that organize themselves around not only a climate of homophobia and heteronormitivity, but misogyny, government inaction and myopic notions of what constitutes blackness.

What is written in beautifully engineered constitutional texts is not articulated on the ground and Black lesbians walking throughout South Africa confront that dangerous knowing everyday. And some don't live to face the hostility of another day.

This past Sunday in Soweto Meadowlands, Sizakele Sigasa, an outreach coordinator at Positive Women's Network and an LGBT rights activist, and her friend Salome were tortured and brutally murdered. Sizakele was found with her hands tied together by her underpants and her ankles tied together by her shoelaces. There were three bullet holes in her head and three in her collarbone

This past June, Simangele Nhlapho, a member of a support group for women living with HIV, was likewise found dead -- with her two year old daughter. Both her and her daughter were raped and killed. Earlier in April, Madoe Mafubedu, a 16-year old girl living openly as a lesbian was raped and repeatedly stabbed to death.

I wish the stories ended there.

In 2006, Zoliswa Nkonyana was beaten and stabbed in front of her house by a mob of men in Cape Town for being a lesbian.

In 2005, a lesbian youth almost bled to death during the Johannesburg Pride after being attacked while on the Forum for Empowerment of Women float.

In December 2004 a 22 year-old lesbian was raped in Meadowlands, and in the same month, another teenage lesbian was raped in Mohlakeng.

In May, a 16 year old lesbian was raped in Ratanda, and in March of the same year a 17-year old lesbian was raped in Kagiso.

The stories do not end there and sadly, many stories are never told.

In a 2003, Kekeletso Khena reports to having fled from Soweto after being raped three times before she turned 19. Reflecting on her life as a lesbian in Soweto, she sees her rapes as part of a larger "project." It's a practice called "corrective rape", where men try to "turn you into a real African woman."

And he thought he could penetrate her until she surrendered her lesbianism and shrieked full of gratefulness after each incremental thrust. And he thought he could sodomize her until she recaptured her lost blackness once buried in the in-betweens of her sexual confusion. And he thought he could torture her into proper womanhood—the kind of womanhood that knows no voice and better yet knows no self. And he thought her murder would be his (re)birth. -- poem by Kameelah Rashid