That turned dark quickly. Instead ʺin a way he did thatʼ, she suggested. Catherine ʻwent on to get a lot of the media and the country to know sheʼd been raped.ʼ She said she was then treated in a number of clinics, including the Rape Treatment Center at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. ʻThe doctors talked to me a lot and gave me drugs, and I asked them ʻwould I ever heal? And they would say ʼyou have to heal on a psychological level, as well, because itʼs been a trauma to you.ʼ "My mom says she knows I was raped, but she doesnʼt understand why." I asked what the doctors told her. She said they didnʼt know, and that for her it was just an ʻabortionʼ. But after she had been treated for months, she began to wonder if perhaps the people she had been involved with had been involved with illegal drugs. ʻI began to look at the men in the case very closely, and theyʼd been people that came to our neighborhood all the time.ʼ I asked her to tell me about her friends. ʻEvery night on television was a rapist and then some of the men who had raped me were the nice ones in the neighborhood, who brought the nice clothes to help me in my business.ʼ When she had begun dealing drugs, she had gone on to steal from these men. ʻThey said, "You canʼt have more money if youʼre going to steal." And then somebody started shooting at me, and I got hit in the stomach.ʼ After she got out of the hospital she met a young woman whose husband had been murdered by the drug gangs in her neighborhood. ʻI was the first girl that was out of the hospital after having to have a hysterectomy because of being infected with a sexually transmitted disease. And she was so happy to see another young black woman out on the streets, because her husband had been murdered.ʼ She didnʼt stay with the woman long, as she was soon beaten to death by gangsters in the neighborhood. ʻThey had beaten her husband, and she said she was going to beat my boyfriend up.ʼ I didnʼt know who her boyfriend was, but she kept talking, saying, ʻI told him not to walk on the streets.ʼ She felt scared for him when he was out there. He didnʼt come home. ʻNow my boyfriendʼs dead.ʼ ʻI found him hanging by his neck.ʼ Heʼd been in a mental hospital and didnʼt come home. The doctor didnʼt come, so the boy went to another hospital. And he was put in another ward, and they were beating him, and he was out of there. As her body shook, I was beginning to ask myself why I hadnʼt listened to her father when heʼd warned me not to do anything I shouldnʼt do. In an old-fashioned South African phrase, itʼs the same thing. ʻA lot of times, when you feel down, you may look at the newspapers, and there will be a man dead. You wonder, "Oh God, why did this happen to me?" ʼ This is something youʼll hear again and again in places like Soweto, where people have long memories and few illusions about the future, even if the government in power is more corrupt than ever. ʻYou have to put up with what you get in this country.ʼ I wondered if she, or she and her family, had ever been to the United States. ʻNo, never,ʼ she said. ʻItʼs too far for us.ʼ From what I could gather, ʻyouʼve got to be hard to make it in this country.ʼ ʻYou have to be determined, and be hard as nails to be able to live.ʼ For many of the people I talked to, the life I had been hearing about was not a fantasy world. There were men so determined to rape that they made sure that their victims knew they were about to be raped, as if they couldnʼt get anything unless they took it by force. There were people who wouldnʼt listen to the sound of gunfire in the night, but who could sleep when it came. A woman who knows one of the young men beaten to death in her neighborhood said she knew he was a father when she saw his child being born. And he was, to a drug lord from another neighborhood who was killed in prison after police found guns in his apartment. I left the township of Soweto about 3:30 in the morning. It was dark, the moon was shining, and it was as if everyone in the country seemed to be home. That is what it felt like when I got in my car and turned on the radio to get home, until I heard the music of South Africa and the voices on Radio Freedom. As these voices spoke of oppression and defiance of the past, I realized that even the darkest corners of this country have not forgotten the struggle for liberty and democracy, as well as revenge. Jana W. Ross is a writer for Newsday, the Long Island Newspaper in New York City. She spoke by telephone with Chris Hani, author of the novel Trees Speak, and a number of political activists and authors who helped to draw her attention to South Africa. This story originally appeared in the November 15, 1997 issue of the Long Island Weekly. Comments Kai is trying to tell you something, if we ignore this article nothing will ever change...it is very sad to see what is happening to South Africa. We can only help to make them to free from this suffering that is going on in their lives. "We have no words for the sorrows that are so deep and so wide, and the bitterness that is in so many hearts." About the Author Long Island Weekly won second place in media category of the 2014 FOLIO Awards for Editorial Writing and second place in continuing coverage category of the 2014 FOLIO Awards for Editorial Writing. Please let us know what we can do to improve our content in the future by contacting editor@longislandweekly.com. Our Mission The mission of the non-profit Long Island Weekly is to inform, educate, and inspire lifelong learners of all ages to express their opinions, advance their causes, and become active participants in their community.