April 1999 — The Rape
I came home at 8:30 p.m. I was tired.
     I went into my room, put my bag, car keys and cellphone on a chair next to the telephone and went to the toilet kicking off my shoes as I went. As I stood next to the toilet to flush, he was there.
     I began screaming. He walked toward me holding an elaborate silver Argentine gaucho’s knife that was usually in a display among paintings in the lounge, and said, “Keep quiet, I have a knife.”
     I obeyed.
     “Don’t move, I’m going to tie you up.” He opened my cupboard. He’s going to bind me with scarves or stockings, I thought. But this was a man who had prepared while waiting for my return — thick masking tape normally kept in a kitchen cupboard was waiting in my bedroom cupboard. He tied my hands behind my back, making tape go round my wrists and hands.
     “First,” he said, “we are going to have sex.”
     He took off my slacks and underwear and undid his pants.
     He pushed me on to the bed. I remembered reading of a woman who told a would-be rapist she had AIDS and he left her alone. I tried the same thing. He said, “I’ll wear a condom.” He did not.
     I lay there and thought, be calm, be calm. He finished and did up his pants.
     He wound tape across my eyes and around my head. “Don’t put the tape over my nose because I won’t be able to breathe,” I said. He wound it over my mouth and around my head, bound my ankles and my knees. Throughout, I spoke in a calm, level voice.
     I wait a while in case he returns to check on me and then I struggle to free myself.
     Suddenly, I see a torch glow and hear the voices of men at my back gate. At first I’m terrified: Is that him back with more? And then I recognize the voice of a neighbor.
     They unlock the door and stand looking at me in horror. I’m wearing only a longish top, the lower part of my body is naked. I have masking tape all over my head and my body, and my left hand is bleeding where the knife slashed me, but is still attached to masking tape and my jacket, hampering my movement. I cry, “I’m terribly sorry, but he raped me. I don’t have my clothes with me.” My white neighbor goes to fetch his wife. My black neighbor leads me gently away.
     “Please cut off this masking tape. I can’t move properly.” I try to move my bloodied hand. My black neighbor gets something and with the greatest gentleness cuts off the masking tape. (I tell you the race of my neighbors because I want you to know that rape is not about race, as some South Africans think. It is not about what men do. It is only about what a few sick individuals do, it has nothing to do with race or malehood. And indeed men, for the most part, treated me better than women that night.)
     The police arrive. I can see shock on their faces. They ask for details, and I am still astonishingly calm — I know it’s important that I should be. They immediately begin broadcasting details on their hand radios; one dashes out. My neighbor’s wife arrives and holds me. I want to put on my clothes, at least underwear, but she cautions me not to. She helps me find a gown. I keep saying that I’ve got to get AZT fast so that I don’t get HIV.
     The police ask me not to remove the remaining masking tape because they want to fingerprint it. I have all my medical aid details, the police have radioed ahead to Milpark Hospital telling them I’m a rape victim (how I hate the word victim) and that I want AZT. I hate getting out of the car and walking past the people in casualty, who stare at me. My left hand is caked in blood, I am wearing a gown and have masking tape in my hair, around my wrists, neck, ankles and knees. A young nurse guides me into a private cubicle and leaves me. I don’t want to lie on a bed.
     I don’t want anything to do with beds. I don’t want to sit down because then I feel moisture between my legs, even though I do not believe he achieved orgasm. I realize I’m standing with my arms at my sides facing the wall saying quietly over and over, “I’m alive, I’m alive.”
     It takes one-and-a-half hours before the drugs arrive. It is alarming that there is not fast access to anti-retrovirals in the casualty ward for needle-stick injuries and rape victims; this is the country with the fastest-growing incidence of AIDS in the world. They take the first of what will be many blood tests for HIV and hepatitis.
     It is now 1 a.m., we go back to the district surgeon’s office. No one asks my name or attempts to befriend me. I’m just another victim to them, so I take the initiative.
     I’m examined, smears are taken, I mention that my arms and stomach are aching and the doctor then examines me for bruising. Only a few are visible. I ask to go to the toilet, I have not been allowed to go for the whole evening. There is no toilet paper so I am given a sanitary pad to wipe myself with. I ask if I may finally wash my hands, and do.
     In the five-and-a-half hours since my rape took place, another 7,200 women and children had been raped in South Africa.
     And if I have HIV? I pray that I don’t, but I believe all of this happened for a purpose. God sent me this challenge. I have to turn this evil into good and that too is why I am speaking out. Rape victims are not statistics, we are people, this is our story. We have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s the so-called moral society that does nothing that should be filled with shame.

The Following Week
A rapist tries to remove your dignity and sense of personhood; uncaring hospitals and inept, under-resourced police systems reinforce that and increase a sense of terror. But nothing can conquer the power of love, and that is what I and my children have been shown in abundance.
     If you have been raped, if you are raped, please speak out. People want to stop this. We who have been raped, by our voices, have to give those who will help the fuel they need to burn down an uncaring bureaucratic system in the state and private sector, and to eliminate apathy. We destroyed apartheid, this is not more difficult.
     Once you have been raped and you speak out, you enter a secret room that you knew was always there but to which entry was denied until the rape, and within that room are dozens of women and children, many of them prominent women, women you have admired, who sit in this dark fearful room, silent, believing they are alone despite the claustrophobia of their overwhelming presence.
     Speak out. Open the curtains of that room, let in the light, help others to break down the doors and free you from the rapist’s prison.
     This is an election year. This government has one of the highest ratios of women in government in the world — but why do those women in government not do anything to stop this crime against other women and children? Have they become so involved in power suits and sound bites they have forgotten how to care?
     I and others who have been raped, or who will be raped before this election, don’t care about rhetoric or election promises — we want to know what the parties are going to do now.
     The drugs are beginning to make me tired and give me headaches. I don’t want to talk about rape for the rest of my life because I will then be eternally raped. I want to brush off my clothes, dry my tears, clean my house, heal my children and get on with my life.
     I want to be just another ordinary mother, woman and journalist. I want you to pick up the baton and carry on running for me and for every woman and child who has been raped, and who has yet to be raped. Please help save a life.