Lesbians face a fight for survival every day
FOURTEEN women gather in Braamfontein every month to share their experiences of living and surviving as lesbians in South Africa.
The latest monthly meeting was held just weeks after the brutal rape and murder of Duduzile Zozo, a 26year-old woman widely believed to have been the victim of “corrective rape”, the practice of men believing they can cure lesbian women of their sexual orientation by raping them.
The women speak of daily threats, glares of disgust and disapproving remarks that they suffer in public and sometimes at home just because they are different.
The Forum for the Empowerment of Women has provided counselling and support to lesbian girls and women for more than a decade.
Although there have often been reports of corrective rape in the past, the attacks have become increasingly brutal.
“So what if I like girls? Who said that was a sin?” said one activist from Tshongweni section in Kathlehong on the East Rand.
“We get stared at in malls, where people take pictures of us as if we are celebrities. Sometimes we play along and pose for them instead of having them sneak pictures,” said an advocate from Greenside.
“The insults aren’t just from strangers. My mom would sometimes sprinkle holy water on me, praying for me to be ‘healed’,” she said.
Then there is the constant fear. Those who rely on public transport said they had to travel in numbers. They had self-imposed curfews and nobody dared being in the Johannesburg CBD after dark.
“It’s not that I am scared everywhere I go, but there are places we know that we can’t hold hands or hug, like the taxi ranks in Bree and Noord Street,” said a lesbian activist who manages the Chosen Few, a lesbian soccer team currently touring Belgium.
And getting home can be a nightmare. “The taxi driver wouldn’t allow me in his taxi,” said a 26-year-old. “He said to me: ‘You will wait for someone who will take people who think they are men.’ ”
Walking the streets — be it around White City in Soweto or Thokoza on the East Rand — these women live in fear of being raped and killed every day.
A 28-year-old from Meadowlands in Soweto said: “I always stay locked up in my rented room, and even before I walk out of the door I check if there is anyone outside my window.”