Clare Carter/Contact Press Images
Tebogo Motswagi, "I was too afraid of the police to open a case. When you go to the police and you are a man and you tell them you have been raped they laugh at you. They say what sort of a man gets raped. They don't take our cases seriously." More Photos »
South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of sexual assault. According to a 2009 government survey, one in four men admit to having sex with a woman who did not consent to intercourse, and nearly half of these men admitted to raping more than once. An earlier government study found that a majority of rapes were committed by friends and acquaintances of the victim.
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Just as disturbing is a practice called "corrective rape" — the rape of gay men and lesbians to "cure" them of their sexual orientation.
In one of the few cases to attract press attention, in 2008, Eudy Simelane, a lesbian, was gang-raped and stabbed to death. Her naked body was dumped in a stream in the Kwa Thema township outside Johannesburg. A soccer player training to be a referee for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, she was targeted because of her sexual orientation.
In 2011, Noxolo Nogwaza, 24, was raped, and stabbed multiple times with glass shards. Her skull was shattered. Her eyes were reportedly gouged from their sockets. Ms. Nogwaza had been seen earlier that evening in a bar with a female friend.
I read of these killings and began to research them. I was shocked by the contradiction between South Africa's law — it was the fifth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage — and what was actually happening on the streets. With horrific apartheid in recent memory, the country's 1996 Constitution committed itself to equality for the entire nation. But the new constitution could not erase deeply held biases and even hatred toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. If anything, the extension of formal legal protections exacerbated some people's worst homophobic inclinations.
Over two years, it became evident to me that multiple layers of South African society were responsible for the epidemic of corrective rape and that bias, apathy and culpability ran deeper than I could have imagined: in educational and religious institutions, the criminal justice system, and even within families. I met victims whose loved ones rapists back into their homes, or even abetted the sexual assaults, sometimes under the influence of local ministers. Police officers did not document or investigate these assaults.
I believe South Africa can have a bright future. Part of the legacy of Nelson Mandela will be his support for equal rights for sexual minorities. Given its historical travails with race, the country can be an example to the world of tolerance and pluralism. But 17 years after the adoption of the post-apartheid Constitution, gay rights remain more an aspiration than a reality — especially in the townships on the outskirts of the cities.
One woman I met, Simphiwe Thandeka, was "correctively" raped three times. A tomboy, she was raped at age 13 by an uncle who didn't approve of her "boyish" ways. "I didn't know at the time it was rape, because I was only 13," she told me. The next morning, she awoke bleeding and in severe pain. She spoke to her mother and grandmother, who insisted it was a family matter and was not to be spoken of again.
Some years later, Simphiwe's uncle decided that marriage would "cure" his niece of her sexuality. So he arranged a marriage for her. "He took me to his friend's house and told me I must have sex with this man, because I was going to marry him next month," she recounted. "I had no idea what was going on."
The friend raped Simphiwe multiple times, and beat her with a clothes hanger. "He told me I was going to be his wife and not a lesbian," she said. The following morning, the friend returned her to her uncle's house. "He told my uncle he couldn't marry me because I was still a lesbian, and returned the money my uncle had given him," she said.
During a hospital visit, Simphiwe learned that she had contracted H.I.V. from her uncle and had become pregnant by his friend. "My mum had known my uncle was positive, but she never told me," she said.
After giving birth to a son, she was raped again, this time by a priest in her township — who also impregnated her. She gave birth to a daughter. She gave her children Zulu names: her boy, Happiness, and her daughter, Blessing.
Clare Carter is a photojournalist.
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