When Secrets Become Stories

Women Speak Out

Sue Nyathi

• Publisher: Jonathan Ball
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781776190645
• eBook ISBN: 9781776190652
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

She was asking for it.

She should have known better.

Bekezela (persevere), she was told.

It's because I love you, he said.

It's not that bad, she told herself.

In sharing their experiences from girlhood to the boardroom, from Cape Town's suburbs to the hills of KwaZulu- Natal, women from different walks of life show how chillingly common male violence against women is. Together, their voices form a deafening chorus.

Gender-based violence feeds on shame and silence but in this extraordinary collection, brave women reclaim their power and summon the courage in others to do the same.

In speaking out, sharing what was once secret, shame's hold is broken.

Heart-rending at times, it is the honesty and courage of the writing that truly inspires.

When Secrets

Become Stories

Women speak out

Edited by

SUE NYATHI

Jonathan Ball Publishers

Johannesburg • Cape Town • London

To the survivors of gender-based violence who have lived to tell their stories. And in memory of all its victims.

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

PART I THE REASON

BECAUSE Robyn Porteous

PART II THE CHILD

DYING YOUNG Desiree-Anne Martin

A FLOWER BY ANY OTHER NAME Dibi Breytenbach

DEAR JUSTICE MINISTER Olivia Jasriel

PART III THE BOYFRIEND

THE DAY MY BODY FELT TRANSPARENT Ningi Hlongwane

THINGS WE TELL OURSELVES Kelly Ansara

A THIN LINE Ayanda Xaba

THINGS I WISH MY 16-YEAR-OLD SELF KNEW Palesa Nyalela

PART IV THE HOME

NO MORE BEKEZELA Melody Zondo

BRAVERY LOST AND FOUND Cathy Park Kelly

MARRYING ABUSE WITH RELIGIOUS PATRIARCHY Zaheera Jina Asvat

THE SILENCE OF A HUNDRED TONGUES Shafinaaz Hassim

PART V THE MONEY

TAKING BACK WHAT IS MINE Bongi Mdluli

WHEN STAYING BECOMES IMPOSSIBLE Nqobile Mthombeni

IN DESPERATION SHE WENT Rebecca Nomthandazo Sibanda

THE WEIGHT OF MY WOUNDS Senzeni Ndebele

PART VI THE WORKPLACE

THE DANGERS THAT LURK IN THE CORPORATE SPACE Farah Fortune

BOUND BY INVISIBLE CHAINS Ntokozo Malinga

CHIEF PERVERTED OFFICER Eve Lucas

WALKING THE TIGHTROPE BETWEEN THE BOARDROOM AND THE PICKET LINE Mamokgethi Phakeng

PART VII THE FATHER

COME PLAY WITH ME Angelina N Sithebe

STREAKS OF PINK AND PAIN Lorraine Sithole

DADDY’S GIRL Sizwile Masukuma-Sibindi

PART VIII THE SIGNIFICANCE

A KNIGHT IN DENTED ARMOUR Christene van Brakel

THE FORGOTTEN GIRL Leigh Joy Mansel-Pleydell

UNBECOMING Bronwyn Khalil

PART IX THE LAST WORD

#SAYHERNAME: THE FACES OF SOUTH AFRICA’S FEMICIDE EPIDEMIC Media Hack/Bhekisisa Team

USEFUL RESOURCES

ABOUT THE BOOK

IMPRINT PAGE

ENDNOTES

INTRODUCTION

THE GENESIS OF THIS BOOK was when I was asked to speak at a corporate event in 2019 during the #16DaysofActivism campaign against gender-based violence. The brief I was given was to talk about overcoming shame. As someone who has been abused, I understood shame all too well.

At the age of seven I was sexually abused by our houseboy, the name given to male domestic workers in Zimbabwe at the time. My parents both held full-time jobs and, like most children, we were left in the care of our domestic helpers. For years my mother struggled to retain reliable helpers and the turnover was high. She decided to try a houseboy who also happened to be distant relative. While I had two other male siblings, there were times when I came home from school before them and I was all alone with him.

We lived on a freehold in Bulawayo with acres of land on which my parents used to grow fruit and vegetables for their thriving market-gardening business. One afternoon, when I was playing outside, the houseboy called me into the maize field, with its towering maize stalks, where he unfurled to me his penis. He asked me to play with it until it stood firm like the flowering maize cobs. Unthinkingly, I never thought to disobey him because when our parents were at work he was the voice of authority. After he had ejaculated, he rewarded me with a lollipop and swore me to secrecy.

You see, the thing about abuse is that it thrives on silence and flourishes in secrecy. There were more random incidents of abuse and they were all the same, with him wanting me to masturbate him to a climax. After some time, he, like his predecessors, was relieved of his employment and so was my memory of him and his abuse.

It was not until I was thirteen when the memory of his abuse resurfaced to start haunting me. As a child who loved to read, I first discovered what had happened to me in a book. I can’t recall the title of the book but I remember reading about an instance of abuse and being triggered by it. The mind is a powerful thing. I am in awe of our ability to forget and retrieve things that we believe we have neatly tucked away in the deep recesses of our minds.

As the memory crystallised, I felt a deep sense of shame. I blamed myself. How could I have done that? I was a good girl. How could I have allowed that to happen me? I felt soiled and dirty. I never thought to tell my parents because I did not want them to perceive me differently. In their eyes, I was a precocious and innocent child. And so I decided to block out the memories. I simply divorced myself from them. It had happened to that little girl and not to me.

While that was my first encounter with abuse, it was certainly not the last. There would be many more instances when I would be violated.

It’s me at seventeen, walking towards the bus stop from a trip to the library with a heavy satchel strapped to my back. I had to walk past a construction site and as I neared it I could hear the men whistling and catcalling. I remember making a concerted effort to walk further away from them without actually walking on the busy road. One of the construction workers grabbed me and held my hands behind my back. Another worker came over and started fondling my breasts. I tried to kick him and he laughed and casually remarked that I was feisty.

All this happened in broad daylight, sometime between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.. It was on a busy road, bustling with both car and foot traffic. People passed by and saw what was happening but ignored it. They were indifferent to what was happening to me. The lesson I learnt in that moment was that, even in the face of abuse, people will often look the other way. It took the intervention of another construction worker to stop the assault. He pleaded with his colleagues to release me. It stayed with me how he had to beg them, as opposed to command them. He, too, was scared of them.

As soon as I was free I ran towards the taxi rank fighting back the tears. I did not cry then but I cried on my way home after I had disembarked from the taxi. I was starting to get a sense of my vulnerability as a woman.

It’s me at twenty-one, losing my virginity. I use losing in a very literal sense because it was a battle in which I had to succumb to my boyfriend’s forceful invasion. Afterwards he turned around and said, ‘You would never have said yes anyway because women never say yes.’ You see, that is the pervasive thinking often held by men, that we cannot give consent to sex because our bodies are not our own. There is also this insidious thought that prim and proper women will never willingly give their consent to sex. That in a coquettish way their no actually means yes. And that only the ‘loose’ and sexually promiscuous women willingly say yes to sex. This way of thinking is not only flawed but very dangerous. A no means exactly that: no. The absence of a no does not mean a yes. And a no is not a misnomer for a yes.

When we were studying together at his place after our varsity lectures, my intention was never to have sex with him. My consent was not implied by my presence there. While I did not mind the heavy petting and cuddling, I had not envisaged it would progress any further. I was a Catholic girl, raised to believe that sex was only something to be enjoyed in the preserve of marriage, a teaching I held on to.

There I was once again, feeling a deep sense of shame and loss. Now I was tied to this man who had broken my virginity. And yes, I understood the word ‘broke’ in a more nuanced way, then. I was overcome with resentment for him because, while I did like him, I never imagined having to spend the rest of my life with him and s...

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