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Read a first-hand account of a nigger gang-rape; or, one woman’s awakening to the reality of the New South Africa – Arsezania, as the master of the “Why South Africa Sucks” blog calls it.

Black on White Hate Crime: A Survivor Speaks

Any parent knows what a challenging (even if rewarding) vocation being a parent is. Any single parent knows how even more difficult it is to meet the needs of their children. As a single parent suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I know that being a parent in this condition is an often seemingly insurmountable task.

My five year old son and I are perhaps of the luckiest crime victims in this country. (If something as absurd as a “lucky crime victim” can exist.) On the 26th of July last year, three men broke into our home in Pretoria and woke us up at three am. We were sleeping in my bedroom because my son had been having nightmares and climbed into bed with me for comfort. We awoke to a man shaking me and telling me that our house was “full of niggers” (his words) and that if I screamed he would rape my son and then kill me as if it would be the most natural unimportant thing for him to do so. Somehow I did not scream and lay down obediently as he straddled on my back and tied my feet and hands together behind my back with my phone cable.

Some divine sort of calm came over me and I began negotiating for our lives. I told them that they could have anything that they wanted as long as they did not hurt my son. By this time my son was hysterical and the other two men gagged ! him and squeezed his throat until his mouth was torn and bleeding and the little capillaries under his eyes burst from the pressure of his screams. Still he would not stop screaming. I begged them to take me to my study so that I could help them find money that I had hidden in various places there. Somehow they agreed.

They took me and my son to the office at about ten minutes past three – I asked them the time before they stole the clock- and tied me to my chair at my desk. My son was still screaming despite being gagged and violently shaken by the men holding him. Eventually the man who tied me up believed me that if they put him on my lap I would get him to be quiet and he ordered the other two men to put him on my lap. And so we sat shaking for the two hours that these (there is no polite word) cleaned out our treasures and ransacked our haven.

They kept walking up and down the stairs. It was more scary when they were not in the room with us because I didn’t know when they would come back and what would happen when ! they did . All sorts of things went through my mind. They were armed with knives. I was thinking absurd thoughts about how I would try and die as ladylike death as possible if they slit my throat so as not to further traumatise my son. All the while I quietly chanted :PLEASE GOD KEEP US SAFE under my breath. This was peculiar for me as I was extremely sceptical (and still am) about God but perhaps he does exist because we are alive to tell the tale.

When they had stolen everything they could, they came upstairs again and the ringleader was somehow perversely excited by the wretched state I was in. I was shaking so much that my right breast was shaking visibly through my pyjama shirt and he started to fondle it while my son was sitting watching still on my lap. He then told my son not to worry and that he was going to have a party with me and that it was nothing to be scared of. Then God definitely intervened because I pleaded with him not to rape me – explaining that I never even kissed my child’s father in front of him. I did not get off completely because he forced an open-mouthed kiss and fondled my breast again but he did not rape me. After an eternity they left and locked me and my son inside the house.

With the help of my son, I eventually untied myself and we went downstairs to find help. That was just the beginning of a nightmare that continues even as I write this. How can you ever feel like a decent parent when your son has seen you negotiating and letting you be abused by such villains? How do you ever explain that you did it to save your and his life?

Two weeks after the attack, I had a breakdown and literally abandoned my life. I was too scared to be in the house ever again. I am fortunate in that I had somewhere else to go, a very supportive family and access to counselling and psychiatric help. Most of our rape victims do not have such luxuries – I cannot even begin to imagine how they cope. Although I have started a new life with my son in a different place and have found work and managed to sort of make a new home for us, nothing is the same and the costs and suffering as a result of those two hours cannot be quantified.

It is so difficult to look after my son because of the terror and guilt from that night. He constantly tells me the terrible things that he is going to do to the “baddies” when they come act. In many ways it seems that he blames himself for not protecting me that night and no matter how many times I tell him how very brave he was and how he did the right things, he does not believe it. THIS MAKES ME SO ANGRY. They have robbed my son of an innocence that I will NEVER be able to replace.

Practically it is exhausting. I still struggle to sleep- even on medication. Sometimes it is worse than other times – for example when other friends or family fall victim to crime, it brings the reality home again. The lack of sleep and residual fear also rob the joy out of everyday moments that should be special and sacred. Sometimes when we read stories at night the cats will walk on the roof and my son or I or sometimes both of us get terrified. My son asks me to phone the police about three or four times a week. ( I don’t but trying to get him to feel safe enough to sleep and not have nightmares is an ordeal.)

When I am not with my son, I am constantly anxious that something is going to happen to him and that I won’t be able to protect him. This may sound trivial but it is overwhelmingly exhausting because it affects my ability to concentrate and focus at work and sometimes the anxiety gets so bad that I cannot go to work at all.

Strangely, it is not the overt violence that terrorises me. It was how relaxed they were and the things they did like urinating on my floor instead of the toilet, extinguishing cigarettes on the floor etc. that terrify me more. The hate in these actions is beyond my comprehension. I can understand theft as a result of starving but I cannot understand that hate. More particularly that hate directed at a small defenceless innocent like my son.

This lack of comprehension has affected my moral foundations. I have become prejudiced despite my best efforts to rationalise the situation. I have started believing that firing squads are moral necessities and this goes against everything I ever thought or believed before. I would advocate vigilantism. What terrifies me more, is the fact that if I – such a relatively unscathed victim with such a tremendous support system am so badly affected, what is happening to our society and families when just about everybody has been affected by violence in some way.

I am writing this because the worst part of this whole ordeal has been the fact that I want to do something to stop this violent crime. I do not want to leave South Africa but if I live long enough to complete my degree (that I am doing through correspondence while I work) I think that I will have to emigrate to a country where the enemy is not so invisible. Living in South Africa is almost worse than being in a war because anyone could be a villain. For my son’s sake I will leave in a heartbeat if things have not improved.

The costs of the suffering and loss by crime in South Africa cannot be quantified. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. What can we do to make it STOP? Schools and a decent police force are the obvious answers but will take so long and with children growing up in devastated families whether by crime, poverty or illness, the picture looks pretty bleak all round.

Having said that, some things that have helped me not lose hope are the following:
• An extremely supportive network of friends and family who help with the practicalities of childcare when I cannot manage.
• When I am functioning, I try my best to discuss it with my son. I try my hardest not to dismiss the issue when he brings it up. I also try not to lie to him and do not promise that it will never happen again. Instead I show him tangible things that I have to prevent it happening – example a sensor system that alerts us to intruders, a cattle prod and pepper spray to vend off attackers.
• When I am functioning, I try and keep to rituals and routines that bring structure and meaning – meals together, reading stories etc
• When I am not functioning, I try to let my son play with other children at friends that I trust etc. If he does see me crying (from exhaustion, terror or frustration) I assure him that it is not his fault in any way and that I love him unconditionally.
• We talk a lot more about things since that incident that I had tried to cocoon him from. We talk about violence on TV (I try to limit as much as possible) Harry Potter helps in talking about good v bad and whether violence is the best way to solve things
• We talk about the reality of poverty and how some children have very sick parents.
• We talk about sex if he initiates it (which he does after the whole breast thing)
• Basically I wish I had spoken to him about these things before because it would have given us a broader base to go back to and work from but they are issues that I think most parents try to deny to give their four year olds as innocent and cocooned existence. Also it is difficult to know how to discuss these things. I try to take my lead from him.

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