OUTRAGE
Cape Town, South Africa: Early in April I reported reported extensively about the brutal Rape and attempted murder of Soccer Player Millicent Gaika, a lesbian who was raped for the third time, for being a lesbian, in what has come to be known an act of “corrective rape.”
Millicent Gaika of Gugulethu Township alleged her attacker “acted like an animal who wanted to kill” and said “I thought he was going to kill me; he was like an animal. And he kept saying: ‘I know you are a lesbian. You are not a man, you think you are, but I am going to show you, you are a woman. I am going to make you pregnant. I am going to kill you.”
Gaika said the assault began after she and some friends were walking home after spending the evening at another friend’s residence. As she approached her home, they met her alleged attacker, a known neighbor asked Gaika for a cigarette. Gaika then said she gave him one and stayed to smoke with him while her friends walked on. A few minutes later, the man refused to pass the cigarette to Gaika and walked into his room.
When Gaika attempted to recover her cigarette, the man locked the door and it was then he began raping her.
Said Gaika, “He started hitting me and I fought back. Then he started doing what he did to me. He pulled off my clothes and pushed me down on the bed. He did it more than once. He was holding me down, strangling me with wire and pushing his hands hard on to my neck.”
Ms. Gaika also said her alleged attacker had never objected to her sexuality before. “He was very nice to me – I’d known him for years.”
The attack on Gaika continued for nearly 5 hours, and only ended after neighbors finally heard her screams, broke down the assailant’s door and found Gaika naked from the waist down on a bed and bleeding. They then held the assailant until police arrived.
Gaika’s attacker has been arrested and remained in custody through series of bail hearing postponements (continuances.) in the Wynberg Magistrates Court.
Melanie Nathan has been helping to support the group Luleki Sizwe, an unfunded organization of other rape victim lesbians who take care of each other when suffering such trauma a result of now endemic “corrective rape.”
The desperate e-mail was received today after the bail hearing was heard:
Sis Meza, * Andile Ncoza the man who brutally raped Milly is out on bail and
we are all fuming. Millcent wants to commit suicide. She is so scared he will come and kill her. The South African Government is hopeless. They said Andile raped a women not a lesbian.
Under South African law, when Bail is granted it must be an amount that the alleged perpetrator / accused can afford, otherwise the Judge must not grant Bail at all. Unlike in the USA, the very act of granting bail demonstrates that the Judge believes the accused should be released on his own recognizance.
This is an outrage- This is a clear demonstration that LGBT right, Human Rights and Woman’s rights are of absolutely NO concern to Zuma and his administration. This is a case where the victim was rescued in the act of being strangled with barbed wire by a group of neighbors who heard the screams. They were able to wrestle the accused to the ground. There is no question of identity and the witnesses are numerous. How dare the government treat victims with such flipancy.
The South African government is absolutely complicit in injustice and business will go on as usual hailing the World Cup Soccer in a Country where 500,000 women are raped every year.
Any international team who goes to South Africa is risking the taint of hypocrisy. The International community boycotted, and quite rightly so, South African Sports during apartheid, yet this unconscionable endemic assault on women in South Africa, despite many reports in media, is ignored.
Ironically Millicent is an avid soccer player – and recently rejoined her team, two months after her trauma. She will now have to forgo her soccer career and go back into hiding while due to this bail release, her mental anguish will continue in effect, to inflict the very same trauma suffered on that fateful night. 
Millicent has been raped three separate times. The first time was by a gang of 5, all of whom were sentenced to 15 years in prison. How much can one person suffer – no wonder this courageous woman is suicidal.
I call on all women’s soccer teams to speak out about this grave injustice to women. I also call on the US Congress to look into the possibilities of passing a resolution calling on the ZUMA government for severe human rights infractions.
By Melanie Nathan
Meza – is My African Name
[email protected]
@oblogdeeoblogda
All Pictures : Private Courts and Luleki Sizwe© and 2010 Copyright – All rights reserved. Permission to reprint [email protected]