Kwanele, Enough!: My Battle with the South African Police Service to get Justice for Women

By Andy Kawa

Andy Kawa’s life was changed irrevocably when she took a stroll on the popular King’s Beach in Port Elizabeth. She was dragged into nearby dunes, held and assaulted by several men. Her attackers were never caught. Kawa successfully sued the police for failing to properly investigate the attack. Justice Sarah Sephton found police officers were ‘grossly negligent’. The police appealed, and won. Kawa would not give up her fight for justice. She has begun her appeal to the Constitutional Court.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780624089780

Andy Kawa

Andy Kawa is a coach, entrepreneur, social activist and former corporate executive. She is chairman of the Kwanele Foundation, an organisation focused on advocacy to transform the South African police system to be responsive to reported cases of gender-based violence and thorough investigation of such cases. 

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9780624089810_FC

Andy Kawa

Kwanele, Enough!

My Battle with the

South African Police Service

to Get Justice for Women

Tafelberg

Safety and security do not just happen; they are a result of a collective consensus and public investment. We owe it to our children – the most vulnerable citizens of society – a life free from violence and fear. In order to ensure this, we must become tireless in our efforts not only to attain peace, justice and prosperity for countries but for communities and members of the same community. We must address the roots of violence. Only then will we transform the past legacy from a crushing burden into a cautionary lesson.

Nelson Mandela¹

Justice too long delayed is justice denied. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.

Martin Luther King – Letter from Birmingham Jail

To

My beloved mother Lungelwa,

who has been the rock of stability throughout my life,

The spirit of my father

whose loving memory endures forever,

and

My precious babana Celi,

my reason for being.

Foreword

Justice Edwin Cameron

On a bright summer’s day in December 2010, Andy Kawa went for a walk on a public beach in one of South Africa’s major coastal resorts. Her life was full and rich and productive. She had meetings, engagements, responsibilities, loved ones caring for her.

What happened next changed her life. Attacked, assaulted and abducted at knifepoint, in terror for her life, she was pulled into the dunes, held for fifteen hours and subjected to repeated rapes.

What happened should never be any person’s experience. Violent trauma and terror of this kind do not go away. They imprint deeply into the survivor’s life, and remain. They change everything: how the survivor sees the world, how they see others. Spaces that should feel safe no longer do. Revisiting the event and its aftermath, voluntarily or involuntarily, is always re-traumatising.

What happened to Andy Kawa happens to too, too many people in our country – too, too many women most particularly. It should trouble every human being, everyone concerned about our country’s humanity, and its institutions, that gender-focused violence too often becomes but a daily note in the media, often hardly worth a mention, much less a headline.

Worse, Andy Kawa experienced protracted trauma, and then secondary victimisation – when those who should help lessen our trauma only aggravate it – in a bungled police response and investigation.

That, too, happens to too, too many.

But Andy Kawa was different. She gritted her teeth. She decided to fight back. She would not be a victim. She took up her own case, and the broader issue. She made headlines. She decided that what happened to her should become a lesson for our police, for our judiciary, for us all.

She spoke out. She organised against this pattern of violence and uncaring, through her Kwanele! Enuf is Enuf! zero-tolerance campaign. She plunged her energies and resources into a redoubtable response on behalf of all women, who are at risk just by being women. She made known that the mishandling of her case was grossly unacceptable – and she undertook to hold those she knew had let her down to account.

After faltering lawyers’ efforts, she found a good legal team. She sued the Minister of Police. She brought an action she was convinced was warranted by the promises South Africa’s Constitution makes to us all: if the police had done their jobs properly, not only would she have been found and her tormentors arrested on the very night she went missing, but the perpetrators could have been apprehended and questioned; enough evidence could have been collected; and they could have been charged and jailed until their court appearance.

When none of these things happened, when those whose responses should have been acute and alert and immediate, when the authorities appeared lethargic or indifferent, Andy refused to be silent.

I met Andy Kawa for the first time at the Constitutional Court, one month after she was so brutally attacked. Her daughter, as dazzlingly accomplished and talented as she, was clerking for a colleague. Amidst her trauma, Andy would bring lunch to Celi almost every other day. Visiting the court gave her meaningful focus. It also nurtured the hope that her case would one day be heard – and that justice would be served.

She still awaits that day.

The courage Andy Kawa has shown in being a voice for so many – who have felt unprotected, unheard, let down by the systems that should offer hope and deliver justice to those who have been subjected to terrible violence and indignity – is a beacon for us all.

It is also is a reminder of how badly systems fail when these promises are not upheld and when the people they should protect are not honoured.

Andy Kawa’s fight is not over. Not her fight for justice, for herself, and for others; nor her struggle to exact accountability from the administration of justice.

This important and moving story calls us all to account: judges, lawyers, police personnel, humans. Grippingly told, Andy’s tale rebukes us – but it also inspires us to remember, to recall, to reapply, the energies and dedication that – if we apply them – can secure dignity and protection for those demanding it.

Part 1

A Walk on the Beach

9 December 2010

There’s something magical about Port Elizabeth’s coastline on those rare, still days when the west wind doesn’t whip around the bay, sending even seagulls scurrying. That’s not often in a month, so when you do encounter a calm, clear day in iBhayi, you take advantage of it.

On a whim, I pull off Marine Drive into the King’s Beach parking lot. It’s a wide expanse of concrete and even in December you can usually find a parking place. I head for a spot near a narrow road between two dunes, leading down to the sea.

There are three hours to go before my flight back to Joburg and there’s time for a walk on the beach. It’s busy – there are buses spilling out kids for the last school day before the summer break and there’s a circus tent set up and people are queuing for tickets. Going to the circus was always a special December holiday treat for me as a child. Returning to those warm memories of being on a merry-go-round with my brother and sister makes me happy. I want to be part of the carefree crowd.

I park next to a police van. Two officers are inside, eating lunch and seemingly not in a hurry. I have suitcases in the back of my car and sometimes vagrants hang around here looking for an opportunity to steal, so I appreciate the security the police presence brings.

I leave my shoes in the car, lock it, greet the cops and, carrying only my phone and keys, start on the path to the beach. Halfway, I get paranoid about the car and go back to double-check that I’ve locked it. Police or not, there are often car jammers about. There is also, I will later discover, a CCTV camera that picks up my movements.

King’s Beach car park. I am wearing a white pants suit similar to the one I wore on 9 December 2010, the fateful day I went for a walk on the beach.

King’s Beach is nearly two kilometres long, extending from Humewood on the western side, to the harbour wall on the east. There’s space for everybody – lifesavers and swimmers on one end, joggers, dogs and walkers on the other. It could be a best beach contender, were it not for the proximity of unsightly ore dumps and an oil tank farm, a legacy of apartheid’s spatial planning. They loom over the dunes, giving the area an industrial look. When the wind comes from the north-east, the manganese dust blows all over the show.

My friend Thembi and I have just spent a week at St Francis Health Centre near Port Alfred, being pampered, pummelled and starved. We drove back to PE this morning and I dropped her at my dad’s place in New Brighton, while I came city side to meet an estate agent. Nothing is too far away in PE.

It’s my mother’s birthday in a few days and I’ve put in an offer to buy her a house in Summerstrand, close to the beach. The estate agent, as excited as I, popped a bottle of champagne while I signed the papers. I’m sorry I won’t be around to see Mum’s face when they hand her the key to the front door, but I need to get home to Joburg and to my business. My daughter Celi is returning to South Africa after completing her Master’s in law at Oxford. She’ll be taking up a job at the Constitutional Court in the new year.

When I was a child, growing up in the township of New Brighton, north of the city, my father would sometimes bring us to King’s Beach. In the late 1960s blacks weren’t allowed on the main beaches, but Dad didn’t let that bother him. He’d wake me and my brother and older sister before dawn and we’d be jumping over the waves by sunrise, before the white folk had stirred. By the time they arrived we were gone, sand in our hair and salt on our lips.

King’s Beach, Port Elizabeth

A lifesaver’s whistle brings me back to reality and I turn away from the teachers and parents hovering besides towels and mounds of clothing and make for the shoreline. From there I head to the harbour wall, a fifteen-minute walk to a quiet place where starfish, clams and mussels cling to the rocks, covered in emerald seaweed.

I bend down to roll up the trousers of my white linen suit, and then send a quick text to a friend: ‘Deal done, price accepted – happiest day of my life to be able to do that for my mum.’

Minutes later it was to turn into the worst day of my life.

Hermit crabs scuttle along the shore ahead of me. I can almost hear the clickety-clack of their legs. I once read somewhere that they’re known for colonising shells when they outgrow theirs and will fight one another for the best ‘home’. If a vacant shell is too big, they’ll queue up and wait until the right-sized crab arrives, then grab its newly emptied shell. Like humans, it’s natural to want shelter, to have somewhere to belong. Our physical surroundings play an important role in creating meaning and organisation in our lives. That why I feel so pleased to be able to provide Mum with a new home. I had my dad’s house renovated a few years ago so that he could live in comfort. Mum lives in Coega, about 20 kilometres away.

I’m engrossed in my thoughts and don’t see him approaching at first. I’m focused on the sea to my right and the harbour wall ahead.

He comes from the dunes on the left, a pink and white women’s straw hat on his head and towel around his neck. Something about his efforts to appear ‘beachy’ don’t ring true. As he draws closer, I see his eyes and sense danger. I swing round, away from him, quickening my pace. As I turn, so does he, pretending to go back from where he came.

Seconds later he’s at my back.

‘Don’t scream. If you make a noise, I’ll kill you.’

He wrenches a ring that is precious to me from my finger and pockets it, then takes my sunglasses and my car keys. My phone he throws into the sea.

I’m filled with a sense of dread. This isn’t a robbery. Something ghastly is about to happen.

Randomly, my mind turns to a book I recently read called 3,096 Days, about a ten-year-old Austrian girl, Natascha Kampusch, abducted on her way to school and held captive for eight years. It took her that long to find the right moment to escape from her abductor.

Don’t do anything stupid, play along until you see a chance, I tell myself.

We grapple by the shoreline until a wave topples him. I think This is my chance and kick him. I bite down on his finger as he grabs me and I taste his blood. I turn to run, but he’s on me in a flash, beating me, punching me in the face. I’ve never been beaten before and am stunned by the violence. He punches me on the lip and I start bleeding too. Lying on the wet sand with his knee on my stomach, I try to placate him – ‘Sorry, sorry …’

He brings out a broken beer bottle.

‘I’m gonna kill you.’

His eyes are glazed; he looks stoned. I imagine him sticking the jagged bottleneck into my vagina. It’s a ghastly thought and something I’ve heard about happening to victims of rape.

‘I’m sorry … I’m sorry …’

He takes out an okapi – a cheap knife with a serrated blade, popular with criminals and gangs. I visualise it coming for my throat and think of Alison Botha, abducted from her PE home by two men one night in December 1994, then raped, stabbed sixteen times, her throat slit, disembowelled and left for dead at a place not far from here. Her neck was almost completely severed. Imagining that my prospects for survival are slim, I say a silent prayer to God to save me from this devil.

I have nothing to fear with You on my side.

I will be strong and courageous …

I will not be terrified or discouraged,

for the Lord my God will be with me wherever I go …

As a single parent, I’ve always feared dying before Celi has finished her studies and can stand on her own two feet. She’s so close to her first job and I want to be on that journey with her, but instead it seems I’m going to die right here on a beach in the city of my birth. I thank God for bringing me this far, for giving me life until my daughter qualified to begin her career. I can’t blame Him for this sudden turn of events.

Umntu bawo akayazi iyure nendlela ayakuhamba ngayo emhlabeni. Ingathi elam ixesha lifikile.

Yiba nam Nkosi, Thixo wam, mgcini wam.

One does not know the time and place where they will die.

It seems my time has come. Be with me Lord, my God, my Saviour.

As I brace myself for the impact of the knife plunging into me, another sudden involuntary scenario enters my consciousness. It’s of Celi and my parents and brother standing by my grave, tears pouring from beneath their dark glasses. My coffin is about to be lowered into the ground. I realise I’m not ready to die. They are all dependent on me. I haven’t finished my task on earth.

My acceptance turns to pleading with God.

God, let me bargain with you. If you spare me now, I’ll do anything you want me to.

Suddenly the knife is no longer at my throat. It’s been only three or four minutes from the time he first grabbed me, but it feels like an hour.

‘I’ll give you a choice. Either I kill you now, or you come with me.’

So God has given me a second chance. I meekly tell the Devil that I’ll go with him.

I get up and try to walk, but keep stumbling. He holds the knife at my back.

‘Let’s go. If you scream, you are dead.’

Terrified, I obey. Like Natascha Kampusch, I will not jeopardise my life until I am sure of a safe escape. I feel as if I am being divinely protected. For now.

He stops when we reach the dunes. Because the entrance is exposed and the shrubs are thin, I expect him to take me further in, to some kind of secret hideaway. But he pushes me onto the sand right there and tells me to take off my clothes. I obey.

He wraps my top around my head and does the same with my trousers, blindfolding me, although I can still make out shapes through the white linen.

I’m stark naked on a beach with a violent criminal.

I feel terrified of what’s to come and have another sudden flashback, this time of a school friend, Phumla, who was killed by her boyfriend at her residence at Medunsa, the medical university in Pretoria. He stabbed her 21 times – a knife hole for every year of her life. I haven’t thought about her in decades, but now her face floods my mind.

He tells me to lie down. I am aware that the knife and the broken bottle are next to me.

‘If you do anything, I’ll kill you.’

I sing to myself in my head.

Unabantu bakho, Thixo, Ngamaxesha onke;

Ubagcina, ubanceda Eendaweni zonke.

Bakuwela imilambo, Uba nabo wena;

Bakutshiswa ngemililo, Uba nabo wena.

Thou art with thy people, O God, at all times;

You preserve them and help them everywhere.

When they cross rivers, you shall be with them;

when they are burned with fire, you will be with them.

He enters me.

I pray it will be quick