Stop Blaming Yourself

This university student was gang-raped while her best friend watched. Now she’s using her experience to help other victims of violence.

- Dakalo Nemasetoni

SHE drifted in and out of consciousness as she was groped, then raped, in the bedroom of a friend’s house one Sunday afternoon.

Tshiamo Molotsane was a typical 16-year-old who loved hanging out with friends and going out. Her mom, Veronica Wilson (46), was not keen on letting her daughter go to trendy The Social Market in Tshwane, but Tshiamo (now 19) pled and she relented.

“The Social Market was one of those events that my friends always looked forward to but my mother was strict, so I had to beg her to attend,” she recalls.

Veronica’s only condition for her daughter was that she had to be home no later than 6 pm.

It’s a scorching hot day in Potchefstroom in the North West as Tshiamo ushers us into her grandmother’s home, where she nervously recounts her terrible ordeal.

She and her friends went to the market and at about 4 pm that afternoon they went to a friend’s home. There she was offered a drink which quickly made her feel faint.

“Everything was spinning so I decided to go to the bedroom to take a nap. One of the guys there grabbed my arm and led me into the bedroom,” Tshiamo says.

Drifting in and out of consciousness she was raped by four men, while someone she had considered to be her best friend stood by and watched. When they were done with her, the teen was left to get dressed and she hurried home to make her curfew.

Feeling violated and shattered Tshiamo “got home, cried and went to sleep and I did not share my story with anyone until recently”. She was shaken and overcome with feelings of confusion and self-doubt.

“I constantly asked myself why I had put myself in such a vulnerable situation,” she tells DRUM.

“If a man hugged or touched me, even if he was a relative, I would say a mental prayer and hope he wouldn’t violate me in any way.”