Posted on 13 May, 2010

I crossed the river with a group of four people. We were met by a gang of seven guma guma on the South African side who were armed with knives and guns. They forced me to have sex with the women in my group and I refused. Then one of the guma guma forced his penis into my anus and ejaculated inside. I don’t actually know how many of them forced themselves on me because I was confused by the whole incident. I fainted and when I woke up they were nowhere to be found.

…we learned of a group of 500 women and children who attempted to swim across the crocodile-infested Limpopo River to reach South Africa, only to fall prey to local bandits known as ‘guma guma.’ Five of the women who crossed were raped, and two babies were literally taken off their mothers’ backs and thrown into the river to drown.

In September of 2009, I went to a public clinic because of an incomplete miscarriage but the nurse told me they only do abortions for South African people. After they asked for 400 Rand (US $48), which I didn’t have, I went to a N’anga (traditional healer) who helped me with the abortion. In November I went to the same clinic because I had severe abdominal pain. They asked me again for my passport and 140 Rand (US $15). I walked out and bought antibiotics and painkillers.

Our team referred an unconscious Zimbabwean patient to a hospital in Johannesburg. His condition was a result of assault, and the patient presented with a severe head injury. At the hospital, the matron in charge refused to attend to the patient who was in need of critical emergency care, claiming that the patient was not able to say his name, so she was not willing to attend to him. This is shocking. Every medical professional has an obligation to provide care to a patient who is presenting with a life-threatening condition.

I had a patient who was pregnant, and we sent her to the hospital. When she got there, the water had already broken. They took her to the nurses. When they looked at the patient and where she had come from – she produced her papers – they said ‘A foreigner?’, and they just walked away. They left her on the gurney.

The quantity of rubbish is growing every day. Look at this big pile. You can see and hear rats moving around all the time. Can you imagine that here children are walking and playing and that in this room – just next to the rubbish – there lives a small baby just few days old?

A group of people burst into the house, breaking the door. They asked me to show them my South African ID, and when I said I didn’t have any, they started to beat me with sticks, stones, punches, kicks. I managed to escape from the house and started to run along the road, but they didn’t stop. They started to follow me with the car and let me run for a while. They caught me again and beat me up until I was lying on the ground covered in blood. They left me there because they thought I was dead. After a while I tried to move and with difficulty reached a phone box and called an ambulance. The ambulance didn’t arrive. Three people stopped their car when they saw me lying on the ground, carried me into their car and brought me to the hospital. This is not the first time. Last year, six people beat me up, but it wasn’t like now – this time they wanted to kill me.