Angie Mohoebi sits in the living room of her modest house in Vosloorus, a bleak and smoky township east of Johannesburg, South Africa?s largest city.
?Men come to me on the street all the time,? the young woman says, beneath an almost life-sized poster of deceased pop star Michael Jackson, pasted on the wall. ?They laugh in my face and they whisper in my ear, ?You know baby, we are going to (rape) you good. After that, you will love men.
Mohoebi is one of a growing number of South African women choosing to live openly as lesbians. Some are paying a high price for their daring.
Human rights groups say at least 30 women have been murdered in recent years in the country ? simply because they were lesbians. Gangs continue to target these women, raping them under the guise of trying to ?cure? their sexual orientation.
?This ?corrective? rape happens in other parts of the world, but certainly not to the level that it?s happening in South Africa. In some townships here ? including Vosloorus ? it?s almost become a sport,? says Natasha Vally, of the country?s Lesbian and Gay Equality Project.
Triangle, another local gay rights organization, says it deals with about 10 new incidents of ?corrective? rape every week.
The phenomenon gained international attention in 2008, when Eudy Simelane, a former star of South Africa?s women?s national football team, was murdered in Kwa Thema, a township near Vosloorus. Simelane (31) was one of the first women to live openly as a lesbian in the community. A gang of men beat her viciously and took turns raping her, before stabbing her 25 times.
?When asking why lesbian women are being targeted you have to look at why women are being raped and murdered in such high numbers in South Africa,? says women?s rights activist, Carrie Shelver. ?You have to look at the increasingly macho culture, which seeks to oppress women and sees them as merely sexual beings. So when there is a lesbian woman, she is an absolute affront to this kind of masculinity.?
Phumzile Nkosi is a member of the Coalition of African Lesbians and lives in Vosloorus. ?Males (here) have got low self esteem, when it comes to lesbians and gays, and we are a big threat ? not just a threat, a big one,? she says.
The local lesbians, Nkosi maintains that ? unlike the mostly unemployed and ?lazy? men of the area ? are ?go-getters, visible and organized and not ashamed of who we are. This makes the men scared and envious of us.?
Near a shopping center in Vosloorus?s main road, Edward Malumala, wearing a yellow and green T-shirt bearing the image of a smiling Nelson Mandela, says, ?These lesbians, they are full of disease. That is why you never see old lesbians, only young ones. They die of disease before they get old.? He adds, ?The government must give these lesbians ten years in jail. Then they must be locked with the males. Then they?re going to learn in prison.
Outside the Vosloorus community center, Lucky Mpunzi slouches against a wall. He says he?s a painter but can?t find work. Mpunzi says, ?Lesbians, they irritate the hell out of me. They walk around here as if they own the place. If there are some guys who rape them, I agree with that, because they are acting inhuman.?
As in other South African townships, rape is the weapon of choice used against lesbians in Vosloorus. ?By raping us, their point is that no matter if we prefer to be with women, we will always be females to be used by males,? says Sweeto Makghai.
Her partner, Vania Cruz, comments that some men in Vosloorus regard lesbians as ?sexual perverts, freaks, not capable of real emotions and real relationships ? like a lower form of life that deserves to be abused.?
Cruz?s friend, Ndondo Nene, says some South African communities refuse to even recognize the abuse of lesbians, and when they do, they say such women ?ask for it.?
All this is happening within the context of South Africa having some of the strictest anti-discrimination laws in the world. But, says Vally, the laws aren?t being implemented when it comes to the country?s lesbians.
A recent report by the international NGO ActionAid condemns the ?culture of impunity? around crimes against South African lesbians, which it says are ?unrecognized by the state and (mostly) unpunished by the legal system.?
Local lesbian activist Melanie Nathan, of the LezGetReal organization, says, ?Victims are left to fend for themselves with no resources whatsoever and, worse yet, no protection from perpetrators who continue to live as neighbors of victims and continue to victimize them either psychologically through overt threats or physically again and again and again.