Suzan Chala
A campus jol with a group of friends is a common phenomenon over weekends, but one Saturday evening turned out to be more than what Thabiso Mokoena had bargained for when he was awoken at midnight by a vigorous bout of love-making.
The 21-year-old information technology student was not dreaming; a female intruder had forced her way into his bed and had pounced on him.
Mokoena said that when he came to his senses, he couldn’t ward off the intruder. His arm and legs were too weak to try and push the uninvited woman away. Mokoena believes his drink may have been spiked, and that he had fallen victim to a conspiracy between his room-mate and the rapist to put him into a state of semi-consciousness.
“She started kissing me, I tried to push her away. She continued kissing me, including my genitals. I was drunk and weak,” says Mokoena. “I gave up and she raped me.”
Mokoena subsequently sought comfort from a psychologist.
Samukelo Madonsela, counselling coordinator for Agisanang Domestic Abuse Prevention and Training (Adapt) who works at the Alexandra clinic, says: “Men abuse does exist but is not taken seriously, not even by men themselves.” He says that most men are afraid to come out and discuss their experiences.
Madonsela has handled cases where women have abused men emotionally, physically, economically and sexually. In one of his cases a woman had burnt her husband with boiling water because she suspected that he had an affair. He says the man refused to lay a charge against his wife because he was afraid of her. The rape of men by women remains a rare phenomenon.
After the incident, Mokoena was mocked by female student colleagues on campus including his alleged assailant herself.
“They call me verga [a nickname given to men who do not approach women].” He says they jeered that he didn’t know how to perform a “man’s job”, and that he had a small penis.
As a result, he has moved out of the campus residence back to his parents’ home. Mokoena is even considering switching to another technikon in the new year.
“I don’t think I will pass my second-year examinations. I can’t study, I can’t concentrate. I think about this incident all the time. I can’t walk freely around the campus, it’s like I have become a laughing stock.”
Mokena says it all began when he went to a party with his room-mate, Tebogo Leboko. The party was attended by a number of other students, dancing to the sounds of kwaito and house music. As the ball’s tempo continued to rise, one female colleague kept frequenting the table Mokoena and Leboko were occupying.
Mokoena cannot recall the sequence of events after the party. “I was soused,” he said. All he could remember was the moment he jumped into bed, leaving Leboko and the female colleague watching television.
Mokoena says he tried to report the incident to the campus security services, which made a mockery of the incident. The security personnel asked him what kind of a man resents a woman who has brought herself to him (“O ka gana nama eitlisa?”).
Adapt is currently running a men’s programme that offers support to men who are abused and help to abusers who want to change. The programme will focus on shebeens with the slogan “When the going gets tough, the tough go drinking. Now is the time for the tough to go for help.”
“Men find support from beer,” says Madonsela. “We are thinking of training shebeen owners to become counsellors, they have a good relationship with these men and could be of great help.”
Adapt held an ancestral ceremony on Saturday to show that there are ways other than the “Western criminal justice system” to curb abuse. It believes that Africa should embrace the role played by indigenous cultures and beliefs, values and practices. Madonsela says: “Work has been done on educating. Now we should focus on values, and it is our cultural and Christian values to respect each other.”
The names of those involved in the incident have been changed