Near the Eastern Cape in town of Gcuwa, which used to be known as Butterworth, a 110-year-old, partially-sighted woman is struggling to come to terms with a brutal attack that was perpetrated against her on the night of Saturday 09 February 2013.
Daily Dispatch reported recently that the aged grandmother was alone, sleeping in her mud home in the village of Jojweni when she was raped. “I was sleeping when the man entered my house,” said the granny. “He did not say a word. I just felt his hand reach over my left leg and he pulled me from my bed to the floor. I hit my head against the cement and I started screaming and asked him what he was doing. By then he was on top of me and he put his left hand on my mouth as he used his other hand to undress me,” the grandmother to 21 children, and great-grandmother to six more told Daily Dispatch journalist Zwanga Mukhuthu.
The attacker fled when the grandmother’s family came home. Upon finding her the family told the newspaper that the elderly woman was trembling with fear and shock. “I have lost my appetite, my heart is heavy and I constantly feel like throwing up,” the granny told Mukhuthu. “The medication from the hospital makes me sick,” she added.
The terrible story which featured in Daily Dispatch last week is no anomaly. If you follow the news closely, as I do, your heart is likely to be broken daily with stories of rape committed against our sisters, our mothers, our children; and at times even our brothers or fathers.