A lone gay man says ‘enough’ to
After Marchillino Ambraal was gang raped a second time and a friend was killed, he wants to see justice done
Marchillino Ambraal is not particularly in the mood for eating. He has had no appetite since what he refers to as “die voorvalle [the incidents]”. We are in a coffee shop near the Western Cape town of Ceres.
“Ek kry mos nie meer baie eetlus nie. Ek slaap sleg. Kry nagmerries. Sulke goed.” [I don’t have much of an appetite any more. I hardly sleep. Have nightmares. Such things.]
Even talking about “die voorvalle” is hard. “Dis nie vir my lekker om hieroor te praat nie. [It’s not nice for me to talk about this.]”
But, forcing himself, the 25-yearold slowly talks about what happened — the two gang rapes. The alleged perpetrators, he says, belong to a gang that has been active for years in the predominantly coloured area of Bella Vista, where he has lived for most of his life.
Repeatedly calling him a “moffie naaier [faggot fucker]”, the group of four took turns to rape him.
“Ek was naak soos hulle vir my uitgetrek het. Ek kon nie wegkom nie. Elke keur as ek probeer weg kom, het hulle my terug gerem en my geslat en geskop en op die kooi gedruk en … [I was completely naked, the way they stripped me. I couldn’t escape. Every time I tried to get away, they pulled me back, beat and kicked me and pinned me to the bed and …]” His voice trails off.
Despite his visible wounds — a black eye, a gash to the head, scratch marks on his back — Ambraal refused to go back to his bright blue, one-bedroom home to tell his family. He also chose not to report the incident to the police.
“Ek wou nie hê mense moet daarvan weet nie. Dis so ’n vernederende ervaring. [I didn’t want people knowing about it. It’s such a humiliating experience].”
But when, five months later, he was raped again, Ambraal decided to report it to the police.
“Ek was so bang, ek was so hiesteries daai aand met die tweede voorval. Ek het net gedink, ‘Tot hier toe en nie verder nie.’ Ek het net gedink, ‘Ek gaan nie laat dit weer ’n derde keur gebeur nie.’ Want kyk wat het met my vriend gebeur, verstaan? [After the second incident, I was so scared and hysterical. I just thought, ‘To this point and no further.’ I thought, ‘I won’t let this happen again.’ Look at what happened to my friend, you understand?]”
The friend he refers to is David Olyn, the 23-year-old Ceres resident who was tortured and murdered in 2014.
At the edge of Bella Vista, between a dam and a wheat field hissing in the wind and pruned pear trees, is a tiny abandoned structure. It is here where Olyn’s body was found. It is here where he was tied up, his head bashed with a brick and his body trampled on before it was set alight. According to witnesses, the perpetrator, dragging Olyn to the structure, called on young boys present to watch how he was going to “kill a moffie”.
In October 2016, the Western Cape high court sentenced Christo Onkers to 17 years in jail for Olyn’s murder. Onkers was not connected to the gang alleged to be involved in Ambraal’s rape.
Kenith Abrahams, Olyn’s friend and a member of the queer rights organisation Rainbow Angels, escorts us to the structure. As we make our way there, a group of children, no older than six or seven, stop their rugby game, one them shouting: “Keegan, kom kyk. Hier’s ’n vrou-man. [Keegan, come and see. Here’s a lady-man].”
“We have grown accustomed to being called names,” Abrahams shrugs. “To retaliate is no use. It will just worsen the situation. It makes me angry but there’s nothing I can do.”
Pepsi Krog was a close friend of Olyn. “Ons was baie geheg aan mekaar [We were very attached to each other],” she says.
Their years-long bond made identifying his body in the mortuary particularly hard for the 35-yearold. “Dit was vir my baie erg om dit te sien. Hy was my alles. My bestie. Alles. [It was very hard for me to see that. He was my everything. My best friend. Everything].”
Krog adds that homophobia is rife in the rural town.
“Daar is baie diskriminasie teen gay manne hier. Mense vra my altyd, ‘Hoekom loop jy met sulke mense?’ [There is a lot of discrimination against gay men here. People always ask me, ‘Why do you hang out with such people?’]”
But Abrahams says: “The situation is not that bad. It’s maybe two out of 10 people that would try hurting you or call you names and stuff.”
For example, he says the town’s regular drag queen pageants are “very well-attended; always packed”.
Before Olyn’s murder, however, two other gay men had been murdered. One was stabbed to death; the other penetrated with a broken beer bottle. And in 2015, Phoebe Titus, a transgender woman from Wolseley, about 10km from Ceres, was stabbed to death, her attacker calling her a “vuil moffie [dirty faggot]”.
Abrahams adds that, in the first case, a prosecution resulted in a short sentence. No one has been convicted in the other two cases.
Sharon Cox is the health and support services manager of Triangle Project, a queer rights nonprofit organisation. For the past seven years, she has been working in the Witzenberg municipality, which comprises Ceres, Tulbagh, Wolseley, Op-die-berg and Prince Alfred Hamlet.
Cox says: “When people focus on hate crimes, particularly in the