A South African policewoman, who talked a rebel commander out of raping her in Sudan says she can relate to the terrible fear and trauma experienced by the victims of the Kenyan massacre.
Lieutenant Mercy Ramantsi and three other police officers were part of a South African group from the police and SANDF deployed to a UN peace-keeping operation in Darfur in 2010.
On the first day of the five-day multiparty elections in Sudan on April 11, the four were taken hostage as they drove back to their base in the Nyala region.
They were stopped at a roadblock by a group of 18 armed men who took them captive.
After five minutes of being held as a hostage, she was convinced she would be raped.
“After the first night of being there, the commander of the rebels, a short young man, commanded me to leave the other three members and go to him.”
She described this as the longest night of her life.
“He took me to the SUV and started taking off my clothes and I did whatever I could to prevent it. I first told him that I was a peacekeeper who helped his kids, younger brothers and sisters and he shouldn’t do this, but he didn’t listen.
“I then said I was Mandela’s child and he would not like to hear about this and he said ‘la, la, la, la’, which means ‘no, no, no, no’, and then I remembered the environment I was in, the things I learnt from people and their customs, and I knew what to say: ‘Allah would not appreciate this,’ and he stopped and let me go.” she said.
Ramantsi, of Pretoria, was giving a talk on surviving hostage situations on Wednesday, the fourth day of the International Association of Women Police training conference at Durban’s International Convention Centre.
Colonel Minda Aucone, who was kidnapped with Ramantsi, said they began to lose track of time as they were moved from place to place, travelling under harsh conditions.
Aucone, also from Pretoria, said they needed counselling and medical check-ups after they were released 16 days later.
“I think the victims in Kenya would also need counselling because, unlike our situation, theirs was quite violent and the motive of the captors was different. But when you’re in that situation, you go limp and paralysed from the weight of the situation,” she said.
They said they kept calm through mental exercises and keeping a good relationship with their captors whom they were anxious not to annoy so their lives would be spared.