The terrible price of freedom

Three teenage girls are robbed, beaten and raped

This weekend, In the Johannesburg offices of SAWIMA, a South African NGO dedicated to helping distressed migrants, I met three girls from Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo. They were still dressed in muddy rags, and sobbed as they told officials what had happened to them during their bid to escape from the Mugabe regime.

Two of them, aged 12 and 13, were too upset to speak to me. But the 15-year-old described graphically how their bid to find a new life in the Republic had gone terribly wrong.

She told me that the three of them had managed to collect half the money demanded by agents in Bulawayo, in return for safe passage over the border, and on to Johannesburg. Her brother, who lives in South Africa, promised to pay the balance once the girls were delivered to him.

The girls were collected by a gang of several men who specialise in this trade in humanity. Their fee, an average for the trip I understand, was 1,500 South African Rand.

"When we got over the border," said the girl, "they rang my brother on his mobile phone, and he confirmed that he would make the full payment as soon as we arrived. But then the men began to demand we have sex with them. When we tried to resist they beat us, and threatened to abandon us in the bush.

"It was in the night, we had no money, we were so frightened... They all raped us, over and over again...now I think they may have given me HIV."

A SAWIMA official told me that the girls had been taken to a Johannesburg address and kept as sex slaves for several days, before being finally abandoned on the organisation's doorstep early one morning. The girls are now underoing medical examination, and attempts are being made to find the 15-year-old's brother.

The official said that almost half of all women who escape illegally from Zimbabwe endure similar experiences, and she believes that many more are killed after being raped, their bodies left in the bush.

"These human traffickers are beasts," she told me. "People know this, but they are so desperate they will even risk their lives to come here."

Back here in Harare the talks on power sharing begin yet again. And while the politicians talk, the rapes, the beatings and the murders continue.

Comments

[RMacleod]

Again, these terrible crimes are symtomatic
of fundamental problems, that being the one and only Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF!

These crimes in various forms will continue, continue, continue and continue until the problem is destroyed, it cannot be put more simply than that!

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