Lesbians in Khayelitsha too scared to protest, says human rights group

Image: MSF.

From IOL:

By Natasha Joseph

Human rights groups say that lesbians in Khayelitsha are too frightened to picket and protest outside the trial of nine men who stand accused of beating 19-year-old Zoliswa Nkonyana to death more than two years ago.

The brutal attack on Nkonyana was apparently motivated by the fact that she was living openly as a lesbian. On February 3, 2006, a mob of 20 men beat her to death in Khayelitsha’s E section.

Nine of her alleged attackers appeared in the Khayelitsha magistrate’s court on Monday, but the case was postponed because one accused’s lawyer was not present in court, said the Western Cape Alliance for Campaign 07-07-07.

The campaign was launched provincially in February, and consists of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) organisations, as well as groups dealing with HIV/Aids and gender issues.

Read the rest of the story here.

Calling For an End to Terror in Zimbabwe

Photo by Sokwanele-Zimbabwe on Flickr.

Last week, SAMGI along with several other NGOs participated in a protest outside the Cape Town International Convention Centre to defend democracy in Zimbabwe. We also wrote a memo to the Inter-Parliamentary Union urging them to put pressure on Zimbabwe to release the election results and uphold its constitution. We have yet to receive a response.

Since then, the situation there has taken an increasingly violent turn, with graphic photos surfacing of wounded Movement for Democratic Change supporters who were tortured, and news of Zim riot police raiding MDC headquarters, all an indication that there is no end in sight for this election disaster.

The Spirit of Ubuntu: American woman receives one of South Africa’s highest honors

Image from PR-Inside.

Somehow, Linda Biehl was able to forgive her daughter’s killers and start a foundation that helps community projects in the townships where she worked. For that, she received one of South Africa’s highest honors: she was named to the Order of Companions of O R Tambo by President Thabo Mbeki at a ceremony today in Pretoria.

“I have come to believe passionately in restorative justice … It’s what South Africans call ‘ubuntu’: to choose to forgive rather than demand retribution, a belief that my humanity is inextricably caught up in yours,” Ms Biehl told BuaNews. [AllAfrica]

Amy Biehl’s death shocked South Africa and the world as it happened in 1993, just a year before the country’s all-race election. According to Reuters, Biehl had just dropped off three black friends in Gugulethu, when she was attacked by a crowd returning from a Pan African Congress rally.

Woman torched for missing cellphone

From news reports, we don’t know a whole lot about Monique Martin, a 19-year-old woman who was set alight by four men nearly two years ago all for a missing cell phone.

The suspects, Ashwin Hammers, 20, Myron Daniels, 28, Ashley Lategan, 24, and a youth who may not be named, are pleading not guilty in the case, which the Cape High Court is hearing this week. The killing happened in a Strand home near Cape Town.

A witness told the court yesterday that Martin would not have been attacked if she had spoken up and said the missing cell phone was with her boyfriend, Myron Daniels.

The witness also said Martin begged for her life.

Mother raped in front of 6-year-old son

Margot Ludik and her husband Andries.

It was the wee hours of the morning, and Margot Ludik and her husband Andries were lying next to one another asleep in their Leeufontein home when suddenly their bedroom lights were switched on and they saw several armed strangers hovering over them.

“The robbers were shouting ‘we are going to kill you, you are going to die,’” Andries Ludik told a reporter.

The robbers woke the couple’s two young children, and tied their 5-year-old daughter face down next to her father in the bathroom, and their 6-year-old son next to his mother in the master bedroom. They retrieved 5,000 rand cash, and the Ludik’s thought the ordeal was over.

Margot said she believed everything was going to be fine when the robber untied her hands, massaged them and then retied them. “I really think it was a parting thought, but he climbed onto me while I was lying tied up. [IOL]

The couple have since underwent counseling and left for Austrailia.

“It is just crime and violence, and nothing is going to change” in South Africa, said Andries, a well-known lawyer in Pretoria who represents celebrities like Leon Schuster, Sonette Bridges and Louis van Wyk.

19-year-old Sentenced to Life in Prison for Raping Neighbor

A judge sentenced a 19-year-old man to life in prison for gang raping his 13-year-old neighbor who was walking home from school.

Magistrate Kgame Shai said the sentence would act as a deterrent to young people who thought their age would let them off the hook for serious crimes. [IOL]

The 19-year-old, an eighth grader at ZB Kunene Secondary School in KaNyamazane, threatened to assault the girl if she had told anyone, and “the court noted” he showed no remorse. Two male suspects were acquitted because the girl could not positively identify them. A fourth suspect remains at large.

Women Political Leaders Hit a Glass Ceiling in Mauritania

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

Mauritania is often held up as a beacon when it comes to the proportion of women elected to political office – a 20 percent minimum quota was instituted in 2006 – but experts told IRIN once in power many women are still sidelined from taking important political decisions.

“While the quota is a major step forward, changing the situation of Mauritanian women is still a slow process because their colleagues discourage them from leading on issues,” Aminettou Mint Ely, head of the local non-governmental organisation (NGO) Association of Women (AFCF), told IRIN.

“As a result, many of these women cannot fight to overturn discriminatory laws in the country… such as those barring working women from claiming a pension, or paying elected women less than men for the same posts,” she said. [AllAfrica]

Read the rest of the story here.

Another Assault at Noord Street

There’s reportedly been another assault on a woman by taxi drivers at the Noord Street taxi rank in Johannesburg, but this woman wasn’t targeted for wearing a miniskirt, instead she was “talking too much.”

The 23-year-old woman was “allegedly dragged out of a taxi and slapped on the face — because she questioned why she was given her R96.30 change in coins. She had apparently paid her R3.50 fare with a R100 note,” according to The Times.

The suspects, Muzi Madide, 34, and Mtoliki Nkomo, 43, were arrested on Monday and later released without bail. They were charged with common assault and are expected back in court on April 15.

Tshishonga’s assault comes after women were indecently assaulted by being stripped naked for wearing miniskirts by Noord Street Taxi Rank operators.

Nwabisa Ngcukana, 25, was indecently assaulted after her miniskirt was torn by taxi drivers in February.

Taxi organisations and the police promised to arrest the perpetrators after protests by women rights groups but no one has been arrested. [Sowetan]