‘Justice for Cwecwe’: Report of a Child’s Rape Enrages South Africans

The protesters were furious. They threw at the school door where the mother said that her 7 -year -old daughter had matured in her leg. They demanded that the school be closed and threatened to burn it.

The protesters in the small town of Matatile, South Africa known to its virgin and no litadas streets since the mother’s videos, Thandekile Mtshizana, a couple of months of the acsantric university were published online.

The clips attracted millions of points of view and have turned the case of the girl, known online for the pseudonym of Cwecwe, in the last point of view in the long battle of South Africa against sexual violence, challenging a culture of shame and silence. In rural communities such as Matatiele, Cwecwe’s case has touched a nerve.

“This time we say that it cannot be a business as always,” said Thapelo MonaReng, a retail worker who touched the job to attend the protest in Matatile. “We are here to say that enough is enough.”

The police have said that the investigation is and extremely sensitive. The evidence did not find foreign DNA in the girl’s body or clothes, according to a presentation that the police made to Parliament in April. The results of a doctor’s original exam were conclusive intes, police said, added that they have no suspects.

An average of 118 violation is reported every day in South Africa, according to police statistics for the most recent year available. One in three South African women, around 18, or more than seven million, have been victims of physical violence at some point in their lives, according to statistics. Women’s rights activists have long criticized what they see as a warm response of the government. Between 2018 and 2023, more than 61,740 rape cases and 5,523 cases of sexual aggression without resolving were closed.

“We come from a time when the penalty for hitting a girl and sleeping with her strength was a goat and some tabs in the boss’s court,” said Thaang Kuali, a traditional leader in Matatile. While those days have already disappeared to a large extent, Mr. Kuali said: Hello, I hoped that Cwecwe’s case “changes the needle on how men think.”

“I saw men marching against rape for the first time in this CWECWE issue,” he said.

Bergview officials did not respond to comments requests. A lawyer from the school director has said that, based on the time of CWecwe’s injuries, he believed he had assaulted in the legs in the community, not at school.

Mrs. Mtshizana said she was not worried about the insurusivity of the investigation. “I will get justice in one way or another,” he added.

The demonstrations culminated in March with a march to the office of President Cyril Ramaphosa to deliver a request demanding that sexual violence is a national disaster in South Africa.

Cwecwe’s case “must become a catalyst for systemic change, not just another flash that fades until the next tragedy,” said Sabrina Walter, the founder of Women For Change, the organization that wrote the request.

Declaring a national disaster would allow the government to quickly finance efforts to address gender violence, Walter said. And it would also allow a better collaboration between government agencies, from the application of the law to social and health services.

Mrs. Mtshizana says she denounced the assault of her Drayh to the police when her draky told her that it happened in October, but that the story only received attention in March, when she published in this regard in Meke after the month.

She says that a school caregiver had asked her to sweep a classroom. The girl recalled that while sweeping, it smelled what seemed pneumatic ardor and then fell asleep, Mrs. Mtshizana said. His daughter woke up with injuries, but he didn’t know what had happened.

Mrs. Mtshizana, who is a police officer at a separate station, said that after her daughter came home from school with stomach pains and blood stains on the pants on the track, she made her a doctor, who examined her and there she broke the horrible news that she had a leg roof.

“I cried,” Mshizana said in a shared video on social networks. “I cried because I am also a victim or rape. I know how it feels.”

Mrs. Mtshizana said she had decided to make public because she felt that police investment was dragging and had become difficult to obtain updates. His mind went to how he felt when he was raped at age 20, he said, and the opposite that he felt for the justice system later.

“I still live with those scars,” he said. “I want different for my daughter.”

Before the attack, Mshizana said, her daughter had a leg as an interpreter in her first degree class. He loved being an older sister. Now, his daughter is reserved and sketches broken hearts, he said.

“All I can do is fight for her.”