Two years ago, Norma Mbele was gang-raped by three young men after they invaded her home in eastern Johannesburg. The incident left her traumatised. But after months of misery, she tells Amukelani Chauke how a rape victim centre inspired her to reclaim her life.
“I was bitter. I was angry. I wouldn’t even look at a man in the eye. Even if he innocently greeted me, it just triggered something.
“Even if it is an ordinary conversation, I wouldn’t [talk to a man]. I was angry. I was bitter. I was hopeless. But this place gave me hope. It gave me my confidence back. It just made me a better person,” says Mbele after she found hope at the Ikhaya Lethemba victims empowerment centre in April this year.
The centre offers shelter, counsels and rehabilitates raped and abused women and children across Gauteng.
As South Africa observes the annual 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children campaign, Mbele tells of how she eventually walked into the Ikhaya Lethemba centre and found hope.
She recalls in our 45 minute interview just how the centre opened its doors to her, and the policewoman who dealt with her rape case, who went beyond the call of duty and took her in. This allowed her to heal, in which time she cut off the outside world and all communication with it.
Reluctant to revisit the events of that day, the 42-year-old, reveals that the fact that she knew one of the perpetrators angered her and changed her life for the worse.
Trauma, hate, fear and anger were some of the feelings that took over after her ordeal. She found herself in a dark room that most rape and abuse victims often talk about as they go through different phases of recovery.
She never imagined recovering from what seemed like a nightmare that kept playing out in her head.
Mbele’s case, unfortunately, hit a stumbling block when technicalities relating to evidence hampered the progress of the case, and eventually, to her not knowing how to pursue it.
“The scars will never go away. Once you have been violated in that way and you never got to see justice happening, you don’t heal.
“Every time I see a rape case on TV, it just kills me.”
Two years after her gruesome gang-rape, not even her husband respected her any more.
While her husband of 20 years never laid a hand on her, the amount of emotional abuse she endured in the relationship led to their recent separation after he made her believe she was “worth nothing”.
This broke her spirit, hampered her self-esteem and hope that she would one day stand on her own two feet.
After separating from her husband, she moved in with her mother and was immediately confronted with one major problem – how was she going to keep her daughter in school.
“When one does not want to maintain their child who is going to school, it is very hard – especially a girl child. My daughter is in Grade 11. The father does not want to maintain her.
“Everything went out of control when I applied for maintenance. [My husband] started coming after me] because I separated from him. I stayed at my mother’s house, and he would come and intimidate us. As much as we were scared of him, we also had to run to our neighbours because we did not know what he would do to us if he found us in the house.”
But she wouldn’t allow any of it to kill her spirit and the willingness to live a purposeful life.
Mblele is one of many women who got help from the Ikhaya Lethemba centre, situated in Braamfontein in central Johannesburg.
It is there where President Jacob Zuma launched this year’s 16 Days of Activism campaign.
Merita Ground, the director of the facility, says the centre, which opened its doors in March 2004, assisted on average 140 women at a time.
It offers specialised services to 100 children in a programme that runs over a few times.
A tour of the facility shows how victims are counselled by social workers, prepared for their court cases in a designed mini court run by prosecutors and how they are trained to re-integrate back into society through skills training.
Through skills programmes, the centre has assisted women who previously relied on their abusers for financial stability.
An initiative of the Gauteng Community Safety department, Ground describes the centre as a “one-stop-shop” which offers all services that a victim of rape or abuse would need.
While many victims of rape often leave centres like Ikhaya Lethemba after getting help, some end up going back to the centres when the cycle of abuse starts again.
“The centre has a high success rate. As you know, the domestic violence cycle is a repetitive one. We do have a success rate compared to other centres simply because of the multitude of services that we offer at Ikhaya Lethemba”.
Staff at the centre is trained to deal with victims in a professional manner and to also be sensitive, and as soon as a potential client walked through the door, they received immediate attention from a combination of social workers and doctors, who do medical evaluations on the victims as well.
It is this kind of reception that gave Mbele hope. A few months at Ikhaya Lethemba, Mbele says the hatred for all men that she once harboured in her heart is gone, although she’s taking it one day at a time.
She speaks of how the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) had facilitated training for her and several other women in the centre. This assistance from the NYDA had opened a door for them to register a business that will see them designing and selling isishweshwe, African fashion dresses.
“I am grateful to Ikhaya Lethemba. This woman you see now is not the same woman that came to this centre.” – SANews.gov.za
