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Professional nurse and author of ‘LIFE CAN CHANGE IN A MOMENT’ a book nominated for best inspirational/motivational book by the Book Behind Awards. Shares with Pondoland Times how her life all changed in a moment when she was gang raped while she was doing her routine night duty shift.
This brave author takes us through her long and strenuous journey of how she survived this horrendous ordeal. ays she was raped at gunpoint by two men at the rural health facility she worked in. “I had been gang raped at the health Centre I was doing night duty as a professional nurse. The perpetrators were two of them both with guns they accessed the health Centre by forcing their way in, and there were no trained security guards instead there was an old man from the location without any training with just his stick.” She told Pondoland Times.
Nomana tells us that the health department helped in her journey of healing. She says, “The health department helped me by providing a place of safety, so I relocated from where I was staying to a safer place. Secondly, I was allocated to the sub-district, so I stopped working at the Centre I was in. I was also sent to study a short course at UNISA called victim empowerment and support that played a role in my recovery, although it has been a very long journey to recovery.”
Nomana expressed that she has mixed feelings about SAPS and the entire justice system in South Africa. She says in as much as the SAPS and justice department are doing all their power to help victims but the justice system supports the offenders even more than the victims.
“The SAPS and the justice system are doing all in their power. In my case the SAPS especially the investing officers played a major role in giving me and my colleagues support and encouraging us that the arrest will happen, they reassured us and worked very hard in reaching the stage of arresting the perpetrators and at the Sinawe Thuthuzela Centre the SAPS did a great job at providing the rape kit. And treating victims with dignity and privacy was also provided.”
Nomana says with the help of the SAPS the culprits were arrested even though it took six months to arrest them. She recounts that the Department of Correctional Services and the justice system put more effort into correcting the lives of offenders so that the lives of offenders can go on and, in the process, neglect the victims.
“Yes, the Department of Correctional Services does a wonderful job in rehabilitating the perpetrators to a point that they undergo certain programs and that they are empowered so they can be released and reintegrated into society with skills so they can move on with their lives. But sadly, there is nothing that is being done for the victims, victims are suffering on their own. No one is interested to know what your journey is like instead you attend social workers, phycologists and psychiatrists on your own out of your pocket.” Says Nomana.
“Yes, the department of correctional services does a wonderful job in rehabilitating the perpetrators to a point that they undergo certain programs and that they are empowered so they can be released and reintegrated into society with skills so they can move on with their lives. But sadly, there is nothing that is being done for the victims, victims are suffering on their own. No one is interested to know what your journey is like instead you attend social workers, phycologists and psychiatrists on your own out of your pocket..” Says Nomana.
Ntshakaza recounts how that one night changed all her life forever. She says after the ordeal she was not comfortable with continuing to work at that facility because the environment was triggering. “After the ordeal I was not comfortable to continue in fact I did not want to go back to nursing. I stayed home for about 3 months after the ordeal, but I went back to work. The case stretched for more than 3 years and after the sentencing I was crying all the time because I relived that moment after giving the evidence in court. My colleagues could not understand why I was crying all the time because they believed that now that arrests have been made then it is over, so the expectation was that I need to be okay.”
She also explained that after the ordeal she had to resign from work because she could not cope with working where she was traumatized. “I had to resign against my will, but the circumstances of surviving rape forced me to resign so that I am not in the space where the sauce of my trauma was. And I had to go sell pots as a means of making a living. From having a monthly salary to living on a commission basis only and I suffered a lot. I was also not compensated for being injured at work because rape was not listed as a condition of being compensated for injury on duty, that added to my trauma.” Explained Nomana.
Nomana Ntshakaza says she was out of nursing for five years but has since made a return in the profession and now works at the sub district level working in the offices.
She concludes her story by telling Pondoland Times that, “surviving rape is no child’s play it is the most traumatic ordeal one can go through and the sad thing is that statistics are rising on a daily so there is a lot that rape survivors need to do in order to start the healing process.
