A young Lusikisiki woman, who in 2009 was rescued from being married off to an older man at the age of 15, has issued an impassioned plea to the Eastern Cape provincial government to protect the young victims of forced marriages, known as ukuthwala.
Now 30 and a mother of one, the survivor, who was chased while running away naked, abducted by a group of men and threatened with violence, eventually managed to escape.
At one point, she was taken to a local police station only to be told she would be sent back home as ukuthwala was acceptable in her village.
“If you go to my village, you will find lots of 14-year-old brides. I want to urge the government to get involved in ending ukuthwala,” she said.
“A 14-year-old cannot make proper decisions about their own lives, let alone be a wife.
“But now it [ukuthwala] has become sophisticated. They no longer abduct underage girls, instead they convince parents.
“But those young girls, just like me 16 years ago, have no clue what they are walking into,” she said.
The woman was speaking during a signing-off ceremony of the 2025-2030 Eastern Cape Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality (WEGE) strategy between the UN Population Fund and the provincial department of social development at the Mayfair Hotel in Mthatha on Tuesday.
Acting social development MEC MEC Sibulele Ngongo said the strategy would serve as a road map to fight crimes against women in the Eastern Cape.
Narrating her own harrowing story, the survivor, who did not want to be identified, said she was washing clothes in a river near her village when she was accosted by a man from the village when she was in grade 10.
She had dreamt of studying towards becoming an accountant and one day walking down the aisle with “the love of my life”.
“He told me he wanted me to be his wife, but I flatly refused. He said he would try to see me later that day.”
Later, while the young girl was accompanying a classmate, she suddenly found herself eye-to-eye with a group of men who chased and tried to abduct her.
She had just taken a bath and was only covered by a small tartan blanket popularly known as ityali in isiXhosa.
If flew off as she tried to escape, leaving her naked and running for her life.
“It was shortly after 7pm. I was crying and ran into a field but I stopped because my feet were covered in thorns. They threatened to beat me up.”
Eventually, she was taken to a village homestead at about 2am.
She heard the men shouting outside her home that they had abducted her and that she was to be a wife.
Her home was not too far from where she had been taken to and it was common practice for men to go and alert the family of the bride-to-be of their intentions.
“I was hell-bent on escaping and a friend arrived and asked me if I wanted to make a run for it.
“She tried to sneak me out and I ran to my maternal grandmother’s house in a neighbouring village but they [the men], accompanied by two of my relatives, came to look for me, pretending that I would not be married off to this man.”
But when she left for home with the two relatives, they tried to grab her, threatening to harm her if she refused to be a bride.
Eventually, she was saved by a woman and man in a car travelling along the route.
The woman turned out to be Sibongile Capa, daughter of ANC MP and agriculture deputy minister Nokuzola Capa, who has been credited with saving many young victims of ukuthwala in the district.
The young woman, who is now doing a civil engineering course, was among young girls who managed to return to school through Capa’s assistance.
She said when her rescuers took her to the police they were told, “that we will send her back home because that [ukuthwala] is a way of life there”.
Ngongo said many cases of GBV went unreported for fear of retribution.
UN Population Fund representative in SA and country director in Botswana and Eswatini, Yu Yu, said many rural women were still prejudiced by entrenched cultural practices.
The WEGE strategy not only sought to protect their rights but ensure they were not sidelined from economic opportunities.
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