3B

Wednesday, February 19, 2020 // The Statement
3B

Content warning: This piece contains 
graphic descriptions of gender-based and 
sexual violence.
H

er mother said she was sorry 
that she hadn’t been there to 
protect her daughter, and that, 
of all the places she had warned her about, 
the post office wasn’t one of them,” read 
a news report of her death.
On 
Sept. 
4, 
2019, 
about 
2,000 
people dressed in black were gathered 
in the University of Cape Town’s plaza. 
Directly below Devil’s Peak, one of Cape 
Town’s most iconic features, the space 
usually hums with students eating lunch 
or taking a break between classes. And 
if they’re lucky, the sun is still high over 
the mountain. That day was sunny — I 
remember because I’d worn my only black 
pants and they stuck to my legs — but on 
that September afternoon, the plaza was 
the site of a vigil. 
Uyinene Mrwetyana was a first year at 
UCT who, like thousands of women across 
the world, was a victim of femicide, or 
the killing of a woman on account of her 
gender. She’d gone to a post office to pick 
up a package and instead was locked in 
the office, raped by the post office worker, 
beaten with a set of postal scales when she 
wouldn’t stop screaming, then hidden in 
the trunk of a car until her burned body 
was dumped in a township outside the city. 
I’m not sure I have ever written a more 
horrible sentence. Maybe this one is worse: 
This kind of violence is not uncommon in 
South Africa and elsewhere. 
The statistics are horrifying. South 
Africa has one of the highest rates of rape 
in the world, and it ranks fourth, out of 183 
countries, for femicide. About every three 
hours, a woman is murdered within the 
country’s borders. 
Uyinene — or just Nene, as her friends 
called her — had been missing since Aug. 
24. Someone had posted flyers around 
campus, and I wish I could say that I’d 
done something when I saw them — that I 
wasn’t just another person who glanced at 
them and moved on. But I was. 
The school sent out a string of emails 
over a few days: It was confirmed that Nene 
was the victim, that memorial services 
would be held on campus and later, when 
the administration realized how angry 
the student body was, classes would be 
canceled the rest of the week. 
My literature tutor, UCT’s equivalent of 
a GSI, emailed us: “Tomorrow’s schedule 
has officially been suspended by Prof. 
Phakeng. Take this time to mourn, heal, 
and protest if you are able to. As students 
of the Humanities, you are in a position 
to bear witness to and take action against 
human rights violations. I encourage you 
all to engage, in whatever capacity you are 
able to, in the events planned in Uyinene 
Mryetwana’s memory tomorrow. 
“Take care of yourselves and be safe, 
especially if you are going to Parliament. 
Wear sunscreen, bring plenty of water and 

snacks, and charge your phones.” 
My friends gathered in our living room 
to decide what to do. In Ann Arbor, news 
like this would fly through GroupMe and 
Slack threads; I imagined the explosion of 
all the WhatsApp groups we weren’t in. 
My housemates Dinte, Hannah, Maaike 
and I found an Instagram story with plans 
for a march on Parliament and a memorial 
at school. Wear black, it said. It’s OK if 
you’re angry, or grieving, or too upset to 
come at all. 
O

n the day of the memorial, I 
stood in the plaza, on the right 
edge of the crowd. Sunflowers, 
proteas, calla lilies and a hundred other 
flowers spilled off the corner of the stage, 
the only bright spot in a sea of black. The 
crowd began singing in Xhosa and Zulu 
as we waited for Nene’s family to arrive. 
My Dutch friends and I swayed to the 
beat of songs we couldn’t understand. As 
outsiders to this group, our presence was 
the only thing we had to give. 
University 
students, 
faculty, 
administrators and Nene’s family all 
spoke that day. After the memorial ended, 
a protest began. Girls read speeches and 
poems, most of them while crying, but 
then something shifted. The sadness 
became outrage. The whispering became 
yelling. Gone was the murmuring from 
the crowd — it was time for anger. Girls 
began sharing their stories of assault and 
harassment with the crowd. They spit 
their most private, horrifying moments 
into the microphone: having to jump out 
of an Uber after being groped, boyfriends 

thinking their relationship was a free pass 
to their bodies, running across campus at 
night after exams. 
We watched woman after woman cry 
at the podium, then pull herself together 
because people needed to hear what 
happens to women every day, in public 
and in private. I pulled out my phone to 
record a girl describing when her Uber 
Eats driver told her to come get her food 
from the car, only for two of his friends to 
jump out of bushes, trying to drug her. She 
ended up in the intensive care unit. I saved 
the recording, whispering to Dinte that I 
was going to play it for Nico and Jonathon, 
the rest of our group of friends, who’d 
spent the day surfing. I was angry with 
Nene’s attacker, with rape culture and 
with them for not caring. We sat in the sun 
for four hours and listened to these women 
because that’s all we could do. They needed 
to know someone cared about them and 
their story, so we stayed even after most of 
the crowd had gone home. I didn’t want to 
watch another woman cry, but I knew that 
if I were in her position, I’d want another 
person quietly watching, giving witness 
while I spoke. 
When it was finally over, we walked 
down the steps, watching students dressed 
in black disperse across campus. Most 
went to the bus stops, some walked to 
Lower Campus, the rest got in cars or, like 
us, called Ubers. When our car arrived, 
pulling up at the bottom of the steps, we 
checked the license plate numbers before 
getting in. He noticed our black clothes 
and asked about the protest.

“My daughter knew Uyinene,” he said. 
“She hasn’t come out of her room.” 
We told him we were international 
students, that we didn’t know many people 
there but needed to go to the protest. In 
the passenger seat, I thought about how 
small the world is. In a city of nearly half a 
million people, our Uber driver’s daughter 
knew Nene. In a world of over seven 
billion, gender-based violence preys on 
women everywhere.
He dropped us at Cafe Ganesh, a little 
restaurant in our neighborhood. We 
quietly ate roti and falafel salads, reaching 
across the table to share food. Dinte, who 
always knows what to say, stayed silent, 
and I noticed her eyes pooling with tears. 
She leaned her head against the wall and 
closed her eyes, already apologizing. 
“Today was hard. I’ve been thinking about 
a lot of things.” She told us a story about her 
and her boyfriend. The details are hazy and 
they aren’t mine to share. We sat in silence 
as she cried, and then Maaike broke it with 
her own story. I offered one and Hannah 
followed. All four of them were different, 
but every girl has something.
While I waited for the news to go 
international, I debated telling my parents. 
Photos of Uyinene, the protests and anger 
choked my Instagram feed, but on the 
other side of the world, it was silent. I told 
a couple of friends about the attack when 
they asked how I was doing, then regretted 
saying anything. It was overwhelming to 
explain and underwhelming to read their 
responses. What is anyone supposed to 
say? 
I decided there was no point. I was being 
as safe as I could. The next time I had to 
run errands, I asked my friend Jake to 
come with me — Jake, who was tall but 
gangly, and better at cracking jokes than 
intimidation. Coordinating two schedules 
just to go pick up my hiking boots my mom 
had mailed was frustrating. Knowing I 
was only safe if an attacker thought I was 
another man’s property was more so. 
After Nene, though, it was foolish to go 
anywhere alone. Even such a public place 
as a post office. 
These attacks don’t happen because 
women aren’t being safe, they happen 
because men choose to attack women — no 
matter where they are, what they’re doing 
or time of day. My parents were 8,000 
miles away. Half of me figured that if it was 
going to happen to me, it would, and there 
wasn’t much I could do about it. The other 
half knew my privilege, especially abroad. 
When I went to catch a campus bus and 
realized they’d gone on strike, I could 
afford to call an Uber in seconds. My house 
had a gated door. I could leave the country 
at any moment, if need be. I felt safe in my 
own home and was surrounded by people I 
trusted. I’m white. 

BY ANNIE KLUSENDORF, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

Read more at 
 
MichiganDaily.com

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