Robyn Alaina Botha, 22, born Dewald Botha, is a make-up artist at Cipria Milano from Brackenfell.
At first glance you wouldn’t suspect that Botha is in fact a transgender woman, who’s been struggling with her gender identity her whole life.
She’s a happy-go-lucky individual who exudes confidence to mask her insecurity.
At birth Botha was assigned “male” as her gender, a label she would spend her life trying to live up to.
“I always felt as if there was something wrong with me.
“As a boy, the reflection in the mirror staring back at me was someone I couldn’t relate to.
“It always seemed as if the person I was seeing was someone else,” said Botha.
“I was diagnosed as transgender, shattering my parents’ dream of a model son.
“I was trapped in a body that didn’t belong to me. It was frightening” said Botha.
Her battle with her identity would follow her down high school corridors, where she was bullied for being “too feminine”.
“I was bullied since primary school into high school and even in my college years.
“It started with name calling and then progressed to me being physically assaulted by my male classmates on a daily basis.
“Teachers turned a blind eye - nothing was ever done about it.”
Botha’s mother passed away from heart disease when she was 16.
“Suddenly I found myself alone. I couldn’t cope with the playground name-calling after I lost my mom. I wasn’t strong enough.
“At the end of Grade 9 I dropped out of school and went to community college.”
When Botha started college things seemed to get progressively worse.
After years of fighting her identity and trying to fit into a society that misunderstood her, she learnt to embrace herself and started living as the woman she was born to be.
She legally changed gender on her ID book and Dewald became Robyn.
These small changes had a profound impact on her, it empowered her to be true to herself, but she still felt incomplete.
The stigma Robyn faced would lead her to attempt suicide. It would also prevent her from finishing college
and finding a job to support herself.
“I’m now a very strong person,” she said.
She applied for gender reassignment surgery at Groote Schuur Hospital.
She was discouraged to learn that the government only pays for two to three surgeries a year, making the waiting list a minimum of 25 years.
The idea of spending a “life sentence” in the wrong body made her feel hopeless - a reality she reluctantly accepted for almost three years, as a R200000 procedure seemed unachievable on her retail salary.
This is the road that led Robyn to crowd fund for her gender reassignment surgery.
Robyn met Zane Groenewald, the marketing officer at Backabuddy and they discussed crowdfunding as a possible option to raise funds for the procedure.
“As a member of the LGBT community myself, I have been fortunate enough to witness how far the ‘gay’ agenda has come in recent years and saw this as a perfect opportunity to shed light on a disenfranchised segment of our community,” said Groenewald.
Botha’s campaign went live on August 1 and is still in its infant phase, raising R2454.99 towards the goal of R200000 so far.
Robyn’s story has already touched so many lives and she has gained tremendous support from complete strangers.
She has invited the public to join her in making history, in being a part of the first crowd-funded gender reassignment surgery on a South African crowdfunding platform.
All funds generated will be managed by Backabuddy and paid directly to medical practitioners.
Support Botha’s campaign by following this link: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/champion/project/robyns-journey-to-gender-re-assignment