This is not the point, by [Redacted]
I shared this story as part of a series from women who survived the violent institution that is still know as Rhodes University eRhini in the Eastern Cape. Here is to surviving. A few years later to put my name in the byline.
By Babalwa Nyembezi. Originally published in the Makunyiwe Macala series in The New Inquiry.
One of my first memories of Rhodes University is walking into the Eden Grove administration building, holding my Dad’s hand. I had just turned 18, and my heart was so excited: I was really here. I was about to be a student at the best journalism school in the country. A few weeks before, on my birthday, my parents had paid for my first ever glass of wine.
Fast forward four years…
I had just handed in my dissertation the week before and I’d been out drinking nabangani bami every night since then. We had just met through a mutual friend earlier in the night, but he ignored my closed body language. He picked me up, squeezed me. We had just met.
That night, I’d gone out dancing with my friends. Too much alcohol had been consumed, and this is not the point, but instead of stumbling back up the hill to our reses the way we always did after a night out, he offered my friends and I a ride. Too much alcohol had been consumed, but this is not the point.
We went to catch the sunrise at the Monument, my friends and I drunkenly reflecting on the year while he and his friends carried on drinking. This is still not the point.
That’s my last memory before waking up in a strange bed with my panties off, his fingers inside of me, begging him not to put his penis inside of me as he awkwardly slipped off his underwear.
Too much alcohol had been consumed. This is not the point.
I remember him bringing his penis close to my vagina with the words “just the tip, baby, just the tip,” and my brain shutting down as I braced myself to the fact that this was how I would lose my virginity.
He dropped me off at my apartment at the Post Grad Village. On the drive up, I sat in his car, stunned at what had almost happened to me. I forgot to say goodbye, but I remember getting out of the car, walking into my room, slowly and tiredly taking off all my clothes and climbing into the shower, broken. That was my last day at the University Still Known As Rhodes. Later that day, I had a flight taking me back home to my parents. I had not yet packed up my room, and I couldn’t bring myself to do more than throw a few items into my suitcase and get the hell out of Grahamstown.
A few years later, his name appeared on a list of names on Facebook. I had blocked him on all my social media platforms; he had tried to contact me and connect, afterwards. Seeing that list was triggering, not because of what had happened to me but because his name being on that list meant that he had carried on violating other girls on the same campus. No one had done anything, because I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t spoken up. Instead, I had packed my bags and walked away, literally. Like Solange says, I tried to drink it away that summer. Mina, who had taken part in the silent protest, year after year, protesting the war on women’s bodies.
Seeing his name on that list… A part of me celebrated. Finally, justice would come. I assumed that his being exposed meant that the University would protect students from him.
I was heartbroken and disappointed to hear the decision of the disciplinary committee regarding the #RUReferenceList anti-rape activists and protestors. No wonder it is the University Still Known As Rhodes. They continue to care about being the beacon of colonizer Cecil Rhodes’ toxic legacy; it’s no surprise then that the University hates black women’s bodies.
