ANNA BRINGS HOPE TO RAPE SURVIVORS
Anna Mbenyene (34) spends every Tuesday walking from door to door in Nelspruit's enormous townships, working for nothing.
Armed with a grubby 32-page notebook, she visits survivors of rape and helps them talk about their trauma.
She has been counselling rape survivors for only the past two months. But already seven pages of the notebook she carries are filled with the names and addresses of the people she needs to help. Most are children aged between three and 15 years.
Notes which are next to some of the names and which outline details from the counselling provide a chilling insight into the horror victims' fates.
"Nightmares. She's afraid to sleep alone," read the notes on the trauma of a three-year-old girl.
"No arrest has taken place. The rapist keeps moving around (her) house. When she sees the rapist she cries and runs away."
Mbenyene's seven pages cover one township, Matsulu, which is situated about 35km outside the city.
She uses separate notebooks for each of the townships around Nelspruit which she visits. There are far too many names for her to visit each patient once a week.
Mbenyene started counselling rape survivors in January after being trained by Nelspruit's Greater Nelspruit Rape Intervention Project (Grip).
Late last year she heard Grip asking for volounteers on Radio Swazi, and decided to get involved. So she took a taxi into town and walked to Grip's offices at the back of St Michael's Anglican Church in Ferreira Street, near the city centre.
She was keen to help, she said, because a close friend had been gang-raped in 1997 and she had witnessed the emotional trauma the rape had caused.
"She's all right now, but it took a long time for her to get better," Mbenyene said.
She does not get upset by listening to the ordeals of the rape survivors she counsels: she focuses on helping her patients.
Last week she visited Thandi (not her real name), a 14-year-old schoolgirl who was raped at knife-point in October.
"She's crying because the rapist always promises to kill her," reads the note alongside Thandi's name.
"The rapist tells her that no police will arrest him here a Matsulu. She's afraid. Even to go to school alone. Her brother-in-law is accompanying her to school."
Like most people in Matsulu, Thandi is desperately poor. The collar of her school uniform is frayed and there is a hole in one sleeve. She wears no socks with her school shoes.
She does not look up and she wrings her hands as she speaks.
Thandi's life changed dramatically after the rape.
Neighbours accused her of lying when she called for help, insisting that her assailant, who raped her on a township street, was her boyfriend. She is ridiculed by fellow pupils. The friend who was walking with her has turned against her, telling others that she is glad about what happened.
Police have failed to arrest the suspect, and he greets Thandi with a "hello" whenever they meet.
She is repeating her school year because she only managed to start atttending classes again at the beginning of this year.
But she is feeling better, she tells Mbenyene, particularly because her blood tests show she is HIV-negative.
"Now I am free," she says.
Mbenyene says goodbye to Thandi and moves on to her next visit. It is already 10am and the other people listed in her notebook are expecting her to visit then too.
