I love South Africa, South Africa doesn’t love me
By: Khanyisa Mnyaka
Tags: Women, Rape, Rape Culture, LGBT, Travel

My brother lowers his eyes as he tells me about the three-year-old boy who was found naked, raped and murdered in an empty field. His eyes don’t water, but his voice shakes as he explains to me where this field is. His girlfriend holds on a bit tighter to their three-month-old son and gently rocks back to sleep. My brother’s eyes keep going back and forth — to me and to his small family. “You remember, Emagxaki, there is that empty field there, that’s where they found him”. I do remember, I used to walk through that field a lot when I was in high school. My friend’s neighborhood was separated from mine by this very field.

It was fearless then; fields were not scary then. “A BOY” my brother says, his shaking voice now growing a bit louder. “A THREE-YEAR-OLD BOY!” he keeps exclaiming, “SOMEONE RAPED AND KILLED A THREE-YEAR-OLD BOY” I want to tell him that it doesn’t matter what gender this beautiful baby was, someone violated a child. I don’t say anything. I let him sit in his feelings, process them as uncomfortably as a Xhosa man processes his feelings. I see him desperately try to move from this topic, but we aren’t going anywhere, we are here now, in the discomfort of the violence that has plagued every single South African community.

My nineteen-year-old brother is sitting at the table, all he does his groan and quietly interjects “a boy!” He skipped a week of school to come stay with Indy and I in Cala — my hometown. He was meant to stay the weekend, but I begged him to stay longer. Cala felt less confronting when we walked with him. Suddenly, the starring became lesser, the cat calling ceased because we had a man in our presence. A man guarantees you safety here. Being seen with one means you belong to him and you can therefore not be bothered. It doesn’t matter if the man is the youngest of your brothers, his presence as a man means that you are his. My brother knows this, he immediately decides that Indy needs his protection more than I do, so, when we walk, he makes sure she’s in the middle.

When he sees a group of vultures “men looking our way”, he collects the skin between his eyebrows, tighten his lips and you can tell all that spells “FUCK THE FUCK OFF”. I am safe, I can walk but why am I so mad?! I am mad that a stroll to Spar ends with me reporting an employee for following us around the store starring at Indy and asking me to ‘gift her to him’, I’m angry that we must debate whether she should wear a skirt, pants, a turtleneck, or just stay inside. I’m pissed off that every single window and door at my grandmother’s house is barricaded (men have tried to break in). I am raging with anger at the fear of sleeping in my room because the drunk people walking past are a potential threat. It is fucken infuriating.

I had never longed to hike those gorgeous mountains that surround my small town, not in the way I do now. We used to hike them when I was younger, we would even go swimming in the river and the night would end in tears as my grandmother beats the shit out of us for swimming in that river. That was my fear then, my grandmother’s nails pressed on my thighs as she pinches the most tender parts, the parts she knows would cause the most pain — the inner thighs. We kept going back, hiking and swimming and then crying at night.

I stand outside my house in the morning now, look at the hills that are perfectly wrapped around my town in what looks like a giant hug and I want to hike them. My girlfriend loves hiking, LOVES IT. I want to take her, but I have heard the stories. The girls who were followed by a gang of men when they went to the river and never made it back home. Their bodies found mutilated and scattered between the trees and creeks. Indy and I stand out like a sore thumb in this town; they will see us, they will follow us, they will rape us, and they will murder us. They kill women here. They most definitely kill lesbians.

Jo’burg, fucken Johannesburg, I have never loved Jo’burg — it is so pretentious but this time…aah I loathed it. Cala is scary, but Jo’burg is TERRIFYING. I spent a year in this busy and unforgiving city after finishing grade 12 in Queenstown. My grades were not good enough to enroll in University, so my father put me a school with other kids like me — kids too old for normal school but too young for no school. I remember the terror of walking through that big taxi rank called Noort. I wasn’t surprised when I heard of a girl who got sexually assaulted in pure day light there. I was horrified, but not surprised. Johannesburg has a reputation of being nasty towards women. It is in this city where a man I was sitting next to in the taxi one morning, pulled out his penis and started jerking off. Just to graze the surface, this is Johannesburg for me, scary, busy, assuming, and no place for village girls, any girls.

There is no amount of preparation I could have given Indy about this city; I was also not ready. The short walk from my friend’s house to the mall makes my adrenal pump, the neighborhood feels threatening. “Don’t walk behind me, don’t walk too far, stop smiling, don’t smile at anyone, don’t maintain eye contact, don’t hold my hand — they might hurt us” these are my instructions to Indy. These are my instructions to me. We walk with a certain intensity here, forcing a ‘bad bitch’ posture and a “get the fuck away from me” expression. It is so uncomfortable, the morphing into something so unattractive and so horrifyingly defensive.

The need for this persona gets confirmed by the guy who yells at me from his car “hey, can you gift her to me!” Can you gift her to me?! This man has decided that she is mine to give, and he can ask. This is not catcalling, it’s rapey as fuck! He waits for a reply and all I could say is “leave us alone!” I hate that I am scared, I do everything I can to mask that fear. It works because he does leave us alone, but not before he watches us walk away. We walk back to my friend’s apartment, I let out a big sigh and promise my baby that there will be no more walking from now on. We spend the rest of our time in Johannesburg in the apartment or waiting outside for the Uber drivers to take us when we need to be. How can one be a woman in South Africa? Why do South African men hate women? This hurt; this home coming hurts.

Before you start assigning race to the epidemic of femicide in South Africa, let me stop you. Yes, statistically, black communities are more affected by this evil. The country is eighty percent black- thus, most of the reported cases are of black people. The white man sitting next to our table at Tasha’s in Rosebank mall reminds us to never lower our guard when we are in the presence of any man. He slowly sips his beer with his eyes fixed on Indy. I don’t see this as he is directly facing her and my back is on him. I only notice what is going on when my friend points out ‘that man is just staring at Indy”. I feel no fear, for some reason, I have convinced myself that white men don’t hurt women. What ludicrous! A glimpse of fear creeps in when the man follows us to the toilet. We get away before he gets an opportunity to say or do anything, I look back and see him just standing and staring. My mind knows now, this is not a race issue, this is a human issue.

The commotion caused by cab drivers trying to get our attention as we get off the twelve-hour bus ride from Queenstown to Cape Town wakes up off our slumber. We immediately become alert, knowing there is no time to be sleepy. We don’t want to get on a cab, Uber feels like a safer option for us. We’ve booked an Airbnb in Claremont. The drive to the house makes me feel weird, I get uncomfortable and defensive. “What is going on” Indy asks. “I don’t know” I reply looking out the window. I know what it is — I feel like an outsider. The whites are driving their fancy cars to work, and the blacks are walking to work in ‘the whites’ homes.

I also hate the feeling of safety my body begins to retire to as we enter this suburb. Why here!? The kids playing at the park make me feel angry, how lucky of them to get to play in the park?! God, they even have a fucking park! We get to the house and the owner is ready for us. She shows us to our room, tells us a bit about neighborhood and then adds “it’s very safe here, you can walk but there are those guys who hang out at the park at night so be sure to Uber home if you’ll be out late”. I know who “those guys are”. The homeless black/colored men who lurk white neighborhoods at night. There’s that feeling again, the one that makes me want to throw up.

“What is going on, baby” Indy asks again. “I hate that I feel safe here. I hate that my own people can’t give me this sense of safety. I hate that I am not afraid to walk around with you here. I hate that I have to be in a white neighborhood to finally breathe!”.

Cape Town is known as the gay center of Africa, this is why I KNOW I will most definitely be holding hands with my love. I am in Cape Town, gays are everywhere here. I don’t account for our dynamic, interracial lesbians. South Africa has not recovered from the atrocities of apartheid. It is rare to see an interracial couple here, and more so, a homosexual interracial couple. I resolve to rebel — the harder the stares, the tighter I hold her hand. I excuse my lack of public affection in other parts of the country as fear based. “I want us to get you home alive” I would tell Indy. Not in Cape Town, we hold hands everywhere! No one wonders who we are to each other. This doesn’t come without a price, the staring I can handle. It is the man who yells “do not take ours as well” at me when he sees our laced fingers.

I am tempted to engage this man-child, because one cannot be an adult and still be so fucking juvenile. I don’t engage, I just keep walking, breathing, and enraged. I know he meant I shouldn’t take their women. The ownership of the female body by men is part of the problem. Women do not belong to anyone but themselves. Women have agency over their bodies; they decide who they give themselves to and cannot be taken. I know this, I don’t know if men know this.

I don’t really have the words that can adequately explain the jarring feeling that I had being in South Africa. “Privilege” is not a word that I would use to make sense of any experience that I have as a black, queer woman. It is even difficult to find ways that I can say “hey this is a privilege that I have as I navigate this world in this body”. I found myself using the “p” word to describe myself in relation to other South African women. Being in South Africa though, I know what a privilege feeling safe is — it is an immense privilege. I will never take for granted an evening jog, a drunken walk home at night, hiking, holding my girlfriend’s hand or leaning in for a kiss as we wait for the traffic light to change.

I feel guilty now, having this privilege. I think of all the women in my country who will never know what it’s like to not be afraid….every single fucking day! It feels as if they have found ways to be in this aggressive space, but I hear them whisper “I am afraid”. I hear this whisper in the brisk walk when they walk home after work, the uncomfortable giggle when a man makes an inappropriate remark: “men are scared women will laugh at them, women are scared men will kill at them”, and in the way excuse their womanhood. “I’ve just stopped wearing short skirts, I don’t run too far, I don’t run at all, I wear less makeup, I don’t get in a taxi if it’s empty, I don’t go anywhere alone…” the list is endless. This list is exhausting. It’s fucken exhausting.

I love home, but home doesn’t love us back.