“We must make sure our communities are safe places for children to grow up in, and no parent should be forced to physically intervene to keep their child from harm.”
The event comes after a number of recent instances of gender-based violence in South Africa. The ‘Lion Mama’ was a lady who, in 2017, killed one of the three men she stabbed after they were caught gang-raping her kid.
Early in the morning, Nokubonga Qampi, who lives in the same hamlet of Cacadu as the aforementioned rape case, received a phone call informing her that three men were alternately having sex with her 27-year-old daughter.
“I was the only one who could help her and I was very scared but it was my daughter so I picked up a knife,” brave Nokubonga, then 57, recalled after the cops failed to respond.
Through the light of my torch, I was able to see that one man was raping her as soon as I entered the house, and that two other men were standing with their pants about their ankles, waiting to take turns with her.
“They rushed me when they saw me, and I don’t want to discuss what happened in that room again. It was an instinctive reaction to protect my daughter with my knife,”
