‘Those drunk women in short
In Diepsloot, alcohol abuse makes violent men close to three times more likely to rape a woman
Brown Lekekela heads over to the flipchart that hides a red and gold advert for Lion Lager emblazoned with the words “choose with pride”. Using a black permanent marker he writes: Women who drink too much are asking to be raped.
“Who agrees with this?” Lekekela, 32, asks after reading the statement aloud.
A group of 17 men and women are seated in a circle in a dim room; broken tiles make up the floor.
There’s a poster on the mustard-coloured wall behind them inviting guests to try the “fuller flavoured” taste of “a refreshing, slowly matured” apple cider. “Dark by name, gold by nature,” says the placard decorated with a sleek black bottle.
A woman in her early thirties, wearing an enormous safari hat and turquoise T-shirt, shouts: “Women who drink and wear miniskirts are irresponsible and want to get raped! Even the police will agree!”
She waves a hand frantically. “Men can see their thighs!”
A young woman in a tight-fitting top with silver sequins in the shape of a heart shakes her head vehemently and breathes heavily. “Men who want to rape women who wear miniskirts are dogs!” she yells. She stamps her feet. “Hai man! It doesn’t matter how drunk the woman is or what she’s wearing. Rape is rape!”
Outside, Frans Lengaka supervises the offloading of crates of beer and brandy. He instructs the workers where to stack the alcohol, and grins: “Castle is my patrons’ favourite beer. It’s only R6 for a 330ml bottle, if you also return the empties.”
Two small boys shuffle past. Laughter erupts from their tummies. They begin a shambolic race among dust, loose bricks and warped cardboard, each pushing an empty black beer crate stamped with the red letters SAB.
The sun beams its midmorning heat on to the shining skin of the powerfully-built shebeen owner as he leans against his double-cab bakkie. “In the week I’m open from 10am to 8pm. Over the weekends I close between 11pm and 12pm,” he says.
Lengaka Tavern in Extension 11 of Diepsloot, a township in northern Johannesburg, is an addendum to its owner’s house. But this morning it’s not business as usual at the shebeen.
Instead, the tavern is hosting one of the Sonke Change trial’s 144 workshops. The meetings, which will reach about 2000 men in the township, started in mid-2016 and will run until the end of the year.
Inside the tavern, tempers continue to flare. A man in a powder blue Uzzi shirt is annoyed with the silver-sequinned woman.
His forefinger flashes and he shivers with anger as he spits: “I will rape them personally, those drunkard women in the short dresses! They are prostitutes. They deserve to be raped.”