When "Innocent Murenga" (not her real name) left her home at Sigodini in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, to South Africa on April 6, she was full of hope of escaping from a life of poverty and hunger. But the dreams and hopes of this 15-year-old girl turned sour when she was attacked and raped by a number of men who left her unconscious.
Relating her story from her bed at the Girls and Women´s shelter at the Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa´s branch in Musina on Sunday afternoon, this second-born in a family of seven children said she left home with her cousin Cletor Moyo and his friends.
"The whole thing happened on the following day of our trip, when we were about to cross the Limpopo River at night," said Murenga. Speaking through an interpreter, Julieth Gudo, the secretary at the shelter, Murenga said:"We were about to cross the border from the Zimbabwean side to South Africa when five men came and demanded money from us. We told them we did not have money and they started attacking us with pangas and sticks."
Asked if the thugs were Zimbabweans or South Africans, Murenga said she did not know but suspected they were from the Zim side as they spoke IsiNdebelele, but they were not fluent. Murenga said she could not recall what happened next, except to find herself lying in a hospital bed at Musina Hospital the following day. She later learnt that she was taken to hospital by Moyo, her cousin, who is now in Gauteng.
Murenga was transferred from Polokwane Provincial Hospital where she was treated for a broken right leg. She also received stitches in her right hand, which had sustained serious cuts.Since she was discharged from the3 hospitall on April 27, the traumatized young girl has been living at the shelter, where she is nursed by Gudo.
She said she was coming to South Africa for the first time, hoping to collect money from her relatives in order to pay school fees for the next term.
"After this incident, I do not know what will happen to me. I do not have any plan right now. The whole incident left me traumatized and it pains me when I try to think about it," said Murenga.
Gudo, 20, also from Bulawayo, said Mirenga was brought to the shelter by social workers. "When I first saw this young girl, I was angry and traumatized. I asked myself what type of people could do such an evil thing to a young girl like this. I get more frustrated when I think about her future. I come across this situation every day, especially during December and the Easter holidays, and one wonders when it will end," said Gudo, who has been working in the shelter for the past three years while attending school at Musina High, where she is in Grade 12.
Mr Jacob Matakanye, the spokesperson for the shelter, said he was tired of the horror happening at the border. "The problem is that both the South African government and the Zimbabweans are doing nothing about these attacks because the crimes are happening at the river, which they say is no man´s land."
Matakanye believes more women who are raped at the border enter the country illegally and settle in different communities, without being examined by medical practitioners.