Rape on boys and girls, Busie Mtshede, happens in decent homes and in all sections of our societies!

Busie Mtshede, thank you for your most enlightening revelations about rape in our society. I read your article: Man recounts rape ordeal, yes man! in Bulawayo24 by Busie Mtshede 15th of May 2016, with a tight lipped face, my heart was running fast, this is always the case with me when I read many cases of rape in our social media. I empathized with your ordeal of rape right through; I too am a victim of child abuse and rape.

The difference between your story and me is that at least your mother was shocked when you at last decided to tell her about rape done to you. (I do not know if it's you in the story or you are writing about someone else on his behalf.) Until very late nobody believed my story even my own parents, they did not want to hear and listen to my story despite the fact that my sister was, made pregnant by the 'good' Inspector of Police, Inspector Molife, and the hands of trust.

I remember hoe embarrassed I was when it came to light that I was also sexually abused by some Police Inspector at Umnyathi, Inspector Hosea David Molife, a man supposed to be our father, was actually an uncle husband to our Auntie: Tete, Ubabakazi. (chiramu, umlamu usibali ) I was eight when penis penetration was introduced in my vaginal canal. When I cried, my mouth was held tight so that no noise came out until he had finished his business.

After a week's rest, (he interchanged me with prostitutes) he came again at night and pulled me from the bed I was sharing with his daughter, Shelly. He never touched his daughter but another person's child, oh yes he could do it. I had not healed inside my vaginal canal; it was the big penis I had to endure again. Sometimes, if I was lucky, he would tell me to play with his penis until he got the orgasm that set him screaming to the toilet to let the sperm charge off. This continued for the whole year until we were sent back to the farm at Msengezi.

As if it was not enough, I went to Zambia to further my secondary education since I was a school drop-out in Rhodesian schools. I was staying with my cousin sister in Lusaka whose husband got it that I was abused when I was young. Instead of being sorry about childhood experience, he used it to his advantage; I was raped at every opportunity he got for about three years. I could not take it anymore, I decided to run away. I went to stay with a South African family Mr. and Mrs Langa and their daughter Nomalizo Ntombi Langa. I was 20 years old when I went to Zambia. But because my self-esteem was so low, and fear too, so many issues conspired against all possible solutions to rid myself of rape. I hardly could put up a defence, or even tell my cousin-sister Josephine that I am being sexually abused by her husband, what I could easily have done. I remember the 'good' brother-in-law telling me if I refused sex with him I will be sent back to Rhodesia, I feared this so much, I was in Zambia for the purpose of getting secondary education and proceed to do tertiary education in Eastern countries: East Germany Soviet Union, Cuba etc.

When I left the family, I was not sure if I was pregnant from the rape. I went to the University Teaching Hospital of Lusaka for a pregnancy test. I told myself if was pregnant I was not going to live as I had made my decision to terminate my life. I was so naïve; I did not even know the mechanisms to kill myself! It was faith in retrospect that sustained me, removed from me all knowledge of omitting suicide, more than anything else.

It was the ridicule from my cousin-sister Josephine that took a lot out of me, she told me openly I was a dirty girl and she wonders why I came to Zambia and was staying in her home? The tree years I lived in her house I was treated like a second class persona by all the members of the family except the two little girls and Bernard Masipeta.

Now let me tell you about the ridicule I endured in the hands of my family because of the rape by a family relative. I was told by my own first born brother how loose I was to sleep with my brother-in-law, Masipeta in Zambia. I was told by my own brother that I am the rotten egg in the family. What is worse than those words to a child of your own brother?

When I met my mother in Zambia because I had run away, she told me on my face how destructive I was and has always been. My own mother, my own mother!  She said, Ufuze o dadewabo bakayihlo. My mother had put me to stay with her relatives to acquire education but because I was loose, I slept with the husband of my sister, for the purpose of destroying her marriage. That she abandoned me at the age of five; she cannot see the damage she did by going away and leaving me vulnerable in the sense of the word. This is what I have to live with the whole of my life dear Busie Mtshede.

There are many voices that still accuse me to this date of being ungrateful for the education I got in Zambia and living with the Masipeta family. I never attended the funeral of my cousin sister because it would have meant having to fake tears and loud cries. Am I going to be grateful for being raped too? I am above board; accusations do not move me at all. I will just continue 'telling it' until my dying day.
It took me years to be able to come to terms with ordeals of abuse at my tender age and rape later on in my life. Despite the fact that I wrote a book about my life, 'I shall fear no evil' ASIN: BOOPEYAOC as an eBook at Amazon Digital Services, I will never ever say it assisted me to come to terms with my horrible past. The book because, I detailed almost all painful situations, I began to relive those ordeals once more. You can survive sexual abuse yes, you can survive rape too yes. You do not survive such ordeals by keeping them secret but by telling it all.
What I am conscious of is that I have developed a 'tell it all' before I die, some girls may read my eBook and identify with my past and be able to move on. I know I have become abrasive, I think about myself now more than false comfort of hiding behind evil deeds that happened and they should be concealed so that the good family remains holy and respectful from outside but the rot inside it is galling!

Finally, just this week at my work place, there were conflicts between staff and me: instead of solving the conflicts, I went to my line manager and told her that we could end the problem: I am the one who is at fault! She was furious at me, I think. She told me that I was not at fault at all! She was reminded about the eBook I wrote, she told me almost in despair never to heap problems upon myself to avoid conflict resolutions but to learn to see where the wrong could emanate from! Her name is Mrs. Ulrike Christen. I am telling you this story to see how abused persons fall short of dealing with conflict situations. I was told I was at fault by the people whom I trusted most, I feel like a rotten egg wherever I go! Our first born brother, the person I trusted most told me so.

Before I pen off dear Busie, may I please put below the preface of the eBook 'She shall fear no evil' This preface will give more light into my plight to fight injustices meted on children under the care of those substituted parental guidance, where everything went wrong with me, where everything went wrong with you. I will put below the email just in case you would like to contact me direct.

Preface
Michelle Obama made a speech at the Democratic Party Convention, in 2008. She talked about how both she and her husband arrived at the decision that saw Barack Obama become a candidate in the 2008 US Presidential election. She said; 'because we were so tired of being afraid we had to make that brave decision to let my husband stand for election!' I am not about to stand for elections, or am I entering any race. In a way I am going on trial, and putting others on trial for crimes against womanity, life and innocence. I am saying, in the tone of the Obamas, I am tired of being scared, very tired. I am tired of wearing this heavy mask. I do not fear anymore; I am tired of being afraid. This book is the removal of my mask. It is the emptying of the bowels of my burdened soul. Here in these words, in this book, I put down the cross on which my innocence was crucified. I am screaming out my decades of heavy silence. For whose eyes is this life drama the petals of blood? Who is this book written for? Why does a self respecting and educated woman strip naked in front of all who have eyes and ears; spilling the dirty beans; and hanging the unsanitary family linen on the World Wide Web? Your personal trials and atrocities are not new. You are not alone. Some philosophers have said it, that life itself is violence, it is war, and peace is a temporary visitor to mankind and womankind. Rape, abuse, abandonment and all, are the weeds that decorate the painful garden of life. Why make noise of your individual pain? Why make a song of your personal story when everyone around you is a walking story book; bearing the tragedies and atrocities of this world. Even if you dress your siblings with new names, even if you embellish the tale with proverbs and parables, everyone will know the truth. No amount of dressing and disguising will protect your family whose name you have brought to the court of public knowledge and judgment. Are you the proverbial ungrateful bird who the Igbo of Nigeria say; she unwisely challenged her creator to a fight and was reduced to dust? By what name will you be called, after you have emptied the contents of your chest and told the bleeding family secret to the wide world, Nomazulu? Who will greet you with open eyes in the market place? Who will pick your sorry pieces from where they would be scattered after you have fallen and crushed from the lap of the grace of your clan? My pained Conscience has pelted me with these questions, and haunted me out of sleep like a horrific nightmare. My days have never been peaceful again, since the idea crossed my mind that I should write this book and empty my mind of the burdens of troubled childhood and stolen innocence. If Nomazulu's family linen be dirty with some sins against innocence and childhood, like those Kingdoms that wash themselves clean with the blood of the saints, silence would be a sin.

This book is not a suicide note, no. It is the shedding of old leaves of a tree in the summer wind and heat. It is a refusal of silence and death and a claim to strength and life for all the Nomazulu whose silenced cries will never meet ears, whose injured souls would never have witnesses who will live to tell the tall tales. The crime dear readers, is not of the ever alert bird Umguwe, the whistle blower of the jungle, who throws a shrill piercing scream into the forest to warn all the birds and the animals of the predator who is prowling into the forest, the crime is of the predator who feeds fat  on the flesh of others. The pains of Nomazulu are not individual; they are the collective sorrow of all the abused, rejected and forgotten girls who are victims of wars and some silent sufferers within what on the outside appears like happy families. Nomazulu is the honest and smelly armpit that tells everyone that not everyone who is well dressed and well respected has taken a bath. Nomazulu asks families to take a bath, she asks those who fear the publicity of their linen not to allow the linen to be so dirty as to embarrass and shame. This book is a scream for freedom, and a promise that there is life after abuse, and that in truth, silence is not peace.

I pen off for now
Ugogo omncane
Chirikadzi

Nomazulu Thata is a political activist, an engineering metallurgist by profession, author of two books, a chemistry teacher and lecturer in her present occupation. Her essays are purely personal and do not reflect any political party affiliation. She can be contacted on Nomazulu.thata(at)web.de