DIANE DE BEER speaks to Grizelda Grootboom, who tells the story of a young girl who finds herself on the street and a downward spiral that starts from that point onwards, including human trafficking
"We never hear from the victims,” says Grizelda Grootboom, author of a book based on her true story of 18 years as a sex slave, trapped in the world of drugs and prostitution.
“People don’t care until it comes home,” she says accusingly.
Yet that is what is most needed, for people to care, to take action, to offer even glimpses of normality to these children.
“Another goodie-goodie organisation in the community won’t fix anything,” she says, having lived the life. Exit!, Grootboom’s story, is part of her effort to recover her happy place, the early days before she was ripped from that life by circumstances.
Her home then held the two most important people in her life at that time, her grandmother and grandfather and, slightly on the periphery, her father. The first two died and her dad, after losing his parents, went into a depression, started drinking more heavily and finally abandoned his daughter.
Also at that time, the only home she knew was being demolished by the powers that be, so even that bit of security was literally vanishing before her eyes. Dropped at a shelter by her dad with a few nights paid up, she soon found herself on the street – all of 8 years old.
Most children that age would simply flounder and probably drown given the circumstances, but Grootboom has huge heart and a big spirit. She discovered a community under a bridge in Cape Town, learnt the rules, discovered a new kind of “family” and, before too long, a new life had been established.
She describes her father’s unusual behaviour when he was trying to get rid of her as “teaching her the map”.
What happens when the only life you ever knew is suddenly no more? In this instance, survival kicked in.
At the beginning she thought she would meet someone from her old community, from her early years, who would help. But, because of the destruction of their homes, many of these people turned to gang culture to survive. “Under the bridge I felt safe,” she says matter-of-factly.
In those years she turned to her until-then-absent mother whom she found in a Cape Town township. And while Grootboom writes about their dysfunctional relationship and that her mother had found another family and didn’t want to acknowledge her, turning her instead into someone who cooked and cleaned, she doesn’t want to dwell there.
“I have said everything in the book I wanted to say about my mother,” she says and there has obviously been some reconciliation which is still a work in progress. Grootboom doesn’t want to speak for her mother about her past: “That’s her own story to tell.”
Her life became a merry-go-round of simply keeping alive. Gang-raped in the township while living with her mother, with the community turning their backs on what was happening, yet kept safe by older gangsters on the street, it was an existence of give and take of whatever was on hand or was thrown her way.
Schooling wasn’t an option and glue and drugs became a way of coping with daily life. Ducking and diving was probably a preferred way of moving about and she talks laughingly of Nelson Mandela’s appearance on the Cape Town Parade soon after his release. “Everyone was there for this man, so he was obviously the dude,” she says. For them it was easy pickings, she says, all these people milling about…
When she reflects on that particular time, she and her fellow bridge/street dwellers seemed to love the extraordinary, anything that would turn yet another day into an adventure. Rather than trying to improve these young lives by giving surfing lessons or some such idea that different charities come up with, what most of the street kids crave is some normality.
“A day with a normal family, someone who opens their home to you, that’s what they crave. Not every child wants to be a surfer!”
What was she thinking about her life at that time? “I just thought some kids have happy lives and others don’t. I had a taste of both. Hopefully I wouldn’t vomit or die.”
Simple needs, survival instincts, moving forward, grasping at anything or anyone that offered hope. It was tough but Grootboom had hardened from this street life and when she made a friend who used to visit to do some drugs, she was the person she turned to about starting a new life in Johannesburg.
That was at 18 and her introduction to human trafficking was just about to begin. Betrayal isn’t something that comes into her conversation at all and when she talks about her life there’s no obvious resentment about being let down by everyone. Grootboom is all about moving on, even when tied up and raped for continuous days by a number of men, her “acceptance” of what was being thrown her way, becoming a sex slave, is extraordinary. Perhaps simply moving forward and taking on what is thrown your way is how you make it through.
And she has. That’s the remarkable story of this woman, one that doesn’t need any embellishment, the horror doesn’t need more detail, and even some emotional absence is probably a safety valve for the reader.
Grootboom reckons she wasn’t prepared to listen to anyone and probably felt that “this is what black people deserved”. But once she started her journey back it was about her son and healing, creating a better life for him, a safe life, but also advocating for others who might have to walk a similar road.
She is currently working at Embrace Dignity (www.embracedignity.org.za), an NPO based in Cape Town. It is part of a growing global movement working to restore dignity for all people by advocating for law reform and public education to address commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking. At the moment she describes herself as “a very angry black woman” because she lives in a society, world for that matter, that thinks trafficking is okay, that rape is okay, and it’s okay because it is happening to girls.
“People are playing safe when they ignore what is happening around them,” she says. Ignorance makes it easier for these things to exist. The more we learn about them, the more awareness and the more society becomes part of the solution, the more successful we will be to eradicate these evils. “Involve your kids in this topic,” is her advice.
Busy with her second book, that is what her life has turned into, sharing her story with the world so that they can learn what life is really like on the streets when you’re 8 years old, that it is never a choice thing and that escape from human trafficking is a miracle. The good thing that came from this time, her son, is still young and he thinks his activist mother is a teacher.
And, as a last word, she says: “In the end, it is all about money, it’s people making money off you and you finding money for the next fix just to survive.”