Can Soccer Help Stop Corrective Rape in South Africa?

The World Cup starts in just a few days in South Africa, where the eyes of nearly every international soccer fan will turn for the next several weeks. Elite soccer players, rival soccer teams, and fans galore will descend on Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Rustenburg, Pretoria and the four other South African cities where World Cup games will be played.

So which team is going to be the most impressive? Brazil? Argentina? Portugal? Spain?

My money is on Chosen Few.

No, that's not the name of a new country, or an all-star team made up of powerhouse players. It's the name of South Africa's only all lesbian football team. And while Chosen Few won't be practicing shots in any of the World Cup arenas, they may just make more of an impact in South Africa than any global soccer team can. Why?

Because Chosen Few has formed to give lesbians in South Africa an outlet to help build community, and help stay safe. Recent years, after all, have not been good for South Africa when it comes to the subject of LGBT violence. Yes, South Africa is the only African state to recognize same-sex unions, and yes Cape Town was just named the gay tourism capital of the continent. But South Africa is also home to what many consider an epidemic of corrective rape — a vile form of rights abuse where LGBT men and women are raped in order to cure them of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The practice of corrective rape is particularly brutal on South Africa's lesbian population, with statistics showing that nearly 10 women report being correctively raped per week.

One of those women is Tumi Mkhuma.

The BBC profiled Mkhuma earlier this week. At the age of 11, Mkhuma knew that she had an attraction to girls, telling the BBC that "I knew I was gay even as a young child." Soon, as Mkhuma grew up and became a young adult, others would find out that she was gay, too.

Including a man that lives in Mkhuma's neighborhood just outside of Johannesburg. About a year ago, that man found Mkhuma in a bar. He grabbed her, dragged her out of the establishment, and beat her until she was unconscious. While Mkhuma was knocked out, he then went on to rape her.

"A month later I got morning sickness — that's how I found out he raped me," she says. All because she was a lesbian who dared acknowledge her sexual orientation as a positive trait.

Today Mkhuma is a star on the soccer team Chosen Few. Together, Mkhuma and a dozen other women play soccer together in abandoned lots (in the townships of South Africa, lesbians are refused the chance to play on actual fields). She's hoping that the group might be able to put a spotlight on the violence that lesbian women face inside South Africa.

"We're all lesbians so I feel like I'm with my family. They always put a smile on my face," Mkhuma told the BBC.

Her story now becomes etched into the public conscience much like the stories of Millicent Gaika, Eudy Simelane, and Anelisa Mfo, all of whom were victims of corrective rape. In Mkhuma's case, as in the case of many other women who experience corrective rape, their perpetrators still roam the streets free. South African law enforcement officers just don't see corrective rape as a crime.

Mkhuma has reported her assailant to the police, but no action has been taken in over a year.

"The police don't take it seriously," she told the BBC. "He's threatened me again and says he knows where I live. I don't have any protection. I don't have weapon. I don't have anything. I'm just me. Just me."

Mkhuma really is one of the Chosen Few, in several regards. Yes, she's a soccer player on the team, but she's also one of the few courageous enough to come public with her story, in hopes that what happened to her may never again happen to somebody else.

There's courage, and then there are women like Tumi Mkhuma.

Photo credit: Frerieke