“Sh**, I don’t even a have a condom.” These haunting words were uttered by a man who raped a UWC student on campus in Bellville South on Saturday.
And after the outrage, she said she suffered secondary abuse when police made her wait for more than an hour because she was “drunk”.
The student, whose name the Cape Times is withholding, yesterday detailed her harrowing ordeal she said started when an unknown man followed her to a bathroom at UWC on Saturday night.
The third-year student had been with with friends at The Barn, a UWC bar.
“As I entered the toilet, there were security guards at the entrance. After I closed the door, he pushed it. I screamed, telling him to leave me alone. He kept on saying that he had been watching me with my friends and wanted to talk to me.
“He was grabbing my pants. He pulled my zipper down. He put his fingers in my private parts. I tried fighting him. I told him what he was doing was rape but he continued and raped me. Some people who looked like they were with him came and said he should stop what he was doing. One, a woman, was laughing. I was angry,” she said.
She said footage she checked with campus security showed that the man had following her from where she had been spending time with friends. “It showed a man and a woman laughing before stopping him.
‘‘They left the university and I think they went to CPUT (Cape Peninsula University of Technology),” she said.
“It was a disturbing and a traumatic experience. It even got worse when we were at the police station as we were discriminated against.”
The student informed her mother in Johannesburg, who alerted the student’s sister, who lives in Cape Town. She went to campus. The sister complained that the university had not informed the family.
“We rushed to the institution at around 3am, only to wait at the gate when the security guard could not let us in because they said the Campus Protection Services(CPS) needed to give us clearance to come in,” she said.
“When we finally got into the institution, we discovered that the reason why CPS made us wait was because they had not gone to the scene after they received the call. They only went there once they heard that the family was at the gate,” she said, adding that their experience later at Bellville South police station was equally “shattering”.
They were placed in an isolated room .
“After an hour of waiting, we started shouting for help and discovered that we were ignored for two reasons, which we picked up from the arguments we had with the police.
“The first is that this was a case from the UWC, where these things happen all the time because students party too much, as if just because someone has a had a couple of drinks that gives someone else the right to rape them.
“(Second) it was somewhat of a racial matter. We were four black females and one male. The coloured police (officers) and a black male that were there attended to two coloured people - who came about 30 minutes after us - much quicker than us.”
She said while they were shouting for assistance, one of the policeman threatened to arrest them and to release them only on Monday.
While Bellville South Police Station commander Karen Vorsatz said a complaint had not been lodged with her office, Ministry of Police spokesperson Vuyo Mhaga condemned the alleged conduct by the officers, saying: “This is something that we will have to take it up.
"Rape is a sensitive matter – that is why the Minister of Police (Fikile Mbalula) has prioritised it and is working to make sure that rape cases receive special attention. We condemn the alleged behaviour by the officers.”
UWC spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo said the institution condemned rape, sexual abuse, harassment and any form of violence.
“Given the circumstances described, we encourage the family to take up the matter with the SAPS Complaints Directorate or Ipid. The family is encouraged to contact the university in order to be provided with the context of what had happened, what was done and areas of concern, to find ways of providing support to the student,” he said.
Police said the investigation continued.