← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · wild_bill
Thread ID: 12225 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-02-09
2004-02-09 02:45 | User Profile
[url]http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-zimb08.html[/url]
White Zimbabweans hit by wave of sex assaults
February 8, 2004
BY PETA THORNYCROFT
When Gisela Honeywill was raped in her daughter's bedroom, her hands tied behind her back, her ordeal was just beginning.
Up to a third of sexually active Zimbabweans are infected with the AIDS virus, but police were unable to arrange an urgent medical examination.
She and her husband drove to Harare, two hours away, for anti-viral drugs that could save her from infection if her rapist was HIV-positive.
Days later, the results came through: The tests on the 38-year-old were negative.
There is an unprecedented surge of violence against Zimbabwe's dwindling white population, particularly in the mountainous eastern Manicaland province, once a major tourist destination.
Honeywill's teeth chatter and tears flow when she recalls her ordeal. She and her husband Conrad woke up at 3:15 a.m. three weeks ago to find men on either side of their bed.
They were tied up, beaten and robbed in a two-hour ordeal. When the gang found they had only a few South African rand, one angrily accused them of hiding assets.
"My daughter was away on holiday, thank God. They dragged me to her bedroom and stripped me," said Honeywill. "I thought they were just trying to scare me. I didn't believe I was going to be raped.
"A friend of mine, Francie, was stripped just a short time ago, but they didn't rape her. Then the small fat man hit me, forced my legs open. I didn't bite or scratch, my hands were tied behind my back. Then . . . I can't remember anything except some time went by, and he said, 'I have finished now.'"
All the time, Conrad Honeywill was on his knees crying: "Don't do it to her, don't do it." The windows were open but no one came in response to their screams.
Not their maid living a stone's throw from the back door, nor policemen guarding a politician of the ruling Zanu PF, Didymus Mutasa, four houses away. The three attackers wore Zimbabwe Republic police flak jackets, Conrad Honeywill said.
Gisela Honeywill, a secretary at the local private school, was willing to be identified. She wanted the world to know the dangers she and her husband -- who was born in Rusape and runs an electrical business -- faced in their far-off corner of Zimbabwe.
Two days later, an 18-year-old schoolgirl and her mother had their hands tied and were stripped and threatened with rape in the mountain resort of Juliasdale, also in Manicaland province.
The girl and her parents were attacked by a group of three who said they did not believe the family did not have foreign currency and high-tech goods.
A retired couple in Juliasdale was attacked, and the woman was stripped while they were robbed.
None of the far richer black families in each neighborhood or street where these incidents took place since Christmas was attacked.
Black women have been raped because they were suspected of supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. "Most never come to us, so we have no idea of numbers," a human rights activist said Friday.
Daily Telegraph
2004-02-09 14:39 | User Profile
For how this story will end read the story of Haiti and what happened to the last of the French colonists there when they were at the hands of the majority black population.