For 16 days of activism to end violence against women and children, Independent Media will bring you the harrowing true stories behind the statistics. Please Don’t Look Away.
This is Anthea’s story.
Cape Town - When I met Anthea at Saartjie Baartman Women’s Centre in Cape Town all I knew was that she had been violently abused by her former husband, before being emotionally and financially abused by her own children.
But before long she is in tears, sobbing and wringing her hands. It is not over the abusive way in which her children treated her, but about losing the one good son who loved and cared for her. He was shot and killed on his way to the shops when he got caught in the crossfire of two warring gangs on the Cape Flats earlier this year.
“He was my best child...He was only 17...I visit his grave every week,” she sobs.
Anthea, 50, has given up all hope on her remaining five adult children, who moved in with her at her mother’s house after she got divorced from her abusive husband several years ago.
Anthea said his drug habit had ruined his mechanic business, and he came looking for her one night, as he’d done before. Armed, so he could demand cash from her for drugs.
“He somehow found me at a colleague’s home and he drove his car right into the voorkamer (front room)! He drove off with me, beat me and broke my arm,” she said.
He tossed her out at the entrance to Groote Schuur Hospital, where she was admitted. She was six months pregnant, and she lost the baby.
Instead of her new life away from him being stable, her children were either taking drugs or selling them, and taking financial advantage of her since she was the only one earning a decent living as an administrator.
“I was abused by three of them every day in different ways, physically, emotionally and financially. Every day there was fighting and swearing, and they were usually on dagga or buttons (Mandrax). They would wake up frustrated and take a dirt bin and empty it all over the kitchen. It was so hectic, you give up. My daughter poo-ed in a container and left it in the fridge for me to find,” she said.
It became too much for Anthea, and she suffered a stroke last October which led to her losing her job which everyone relied on, including her grand children.
If Anthea thought this might bring some sense to her family, that one of them might step in to help, she was mistaken.
Even after her son was killed, not one of them woke up to the reality that their lives were spiralling out of control.
“Things became worse and more out of hand. My second youngest could not cope with his brother’s death and became a substance abuser of tik and buttons, and became abusive at home. I could no longer take it,” she said.
For far too long Anthea had been trying to hold her family together in the mistaken belief that somehow everything would turn out alright.
Anthea read a newspaper article about the Saartjie Baartman Centre, and turned to them for help for her and her grandchildren.
A few months down the line, and Anthea has a plan to sell her late mother’s house, split the proceeds with her siblings, and get her own place one day.
“These days I tell people I am not a survivor, I am a conquerer!
“If my family could not handle the challenges I had faced all this time, they are probably not going to be able to handle my healing and who I have become through it.
“Taking control of my life and being conscious is a step towards making myself a whole and self-complete person. Life’s greatest opportunities are often hidden in adversity, and for me that was self-discovery on a radical level, the end of my marriage and relationship with my family,” she said.
Anthea wants to break the cycle of abuse in her family by doing all she can for her grand children to ensure that they grow up to be well adjusted and caring adults.
Anthea’s advice to women who are being emotionally or financially abused by their own relatives is to get out as soon as possible.
“Don’t let it continue because you will end up being depressed and financially embarrassed years later, like I was.
“And talk to a good friend. That always helps make things more clear,” she said.
HERE TO HELP:
The Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children (SBC) was established in May 1999 as the first one-stop centre in the country for women, youth and children who have experienced domestic and /or sexual violence in their lives. It offers an integrated range of services to reduce secondary traumatisation of the survivors and help with a recovery and healing process through the provision of high quality comprehensive services. To achieve this, the SBC works in partnership with non-profit organisations and government departments.
The services include a 24-hour crisis response, short-and-medium-term safe accommodation for abused women and their children, specialised counselling services, life and job skills training, HIV/Aids education, legal advice and assistance, training, research, advocacy, and education and prevention projects in the area.
The SBC is situated in Manenberg on the Cape Flats, an area with extremely high rates of crime, gangsterism, domestic violence, child abuse, unemployment and substance abuse. Some shocking statistics in South Africa include a child being raped every three minutes, a woman being killed every six hours by an intimate partner, 29% of pregnant women living with HIV/Aids, and one in four men admitting to having committed rape by the age of eighteen.
The escalation in violence is reflected by an average increase of 65% in the number of women, youth and children accessing the SBC’s services in the past two years. The SBC assists, on average, 600 people per month. The residential facility also assists trafficked women from other countries.
In 2008 a similar shelter was opened in a nearby rural area, Worcester. The SBC is often called upon to assist others in starting similar centres, such as helping the Department of Social Development to start a shelter in Vredendal in the Western Cape Province.