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
ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCHOTT
Paradise and reality aren’t so far apart