In South Africa, which already boasts one of the world’s highest rape rates, black lesbians are being targeted for particularly brutal assaults. The frequent victims of gang assaults and hideous torture, the government does absolutely nothing. One woman spoke of her gang-rapists taunting her with the “classic lesson” they were imparting during her 2003 abduction. At least she survived. And damned if she isn’t still living her life as an out and proud lesbian and high-profile “footballer.” Where do Third World women find the courage?
The government, even in the case of a rare prosecution, refuses to acknowledge that lesbians are being specifically targeted. Called “corrective rape” by human rights workers (i.e. rape meant to set the lesbos straight), pressure is mounting for the judiciary there to dub attacks on lesbians hate crimes and forcefully prosecute these criminals. Good luck.
FromThe Guardian:
“The partially clothed body of Eudy Simelane, former star of South Africa’s acclaimed Banyana Banyana national female football squad, was found in a creek in a park in Kwa Thema, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Simelane had been gang-raped and brutally beaten before being stabbed 25 times in the face, chest and legs. As well as being one of South Africa’s best-known female footballers, Simelane was a voracious equality rights campaigner and one of the first women to live openly as a lesbian in Kwa Thema.
Her brutal murder took place last April, and since then a tide of violence against lesbian women in South Africa has continued to rise…Now, a report by the international NGO ActionAid, backed by the South African Human Rights Commission, condemns the culture of impunity around these crimes, which it says are going unrecognised by the state and unpunished by the legal system.
If South Africa isn’t going to prosecute crime, should the women there, straight and gay, go commando and start parceling out justice on their own?
