The murder of national team player Eudy Simelane
She played for South Africa's national team and lived openly as a lesbian. On 28 April 2008, Eudy Simelane was found dead.
On 28 April 2008, a woman is found dead in a ditch on the edge of KwaThema, a township east of Johannesburg. It is Eudy Simelane, thirty-one, a midfielder for South Africa's women's national team, Banyana Banyana. She was robbed, raped several times and killed with more than twenty stab wounds.
In KwaThema, people knew Eudy Simelane. She had grown up there, had made it into the national team and never made a secret of loving women. That made her one of the first women in the township to live openly as a lesbian. She also used her fame to campaign for queer people.
Her death brought to world attention a crime that is shockingly widespread in South African townships: so-called "corrective rape". The perpetrators believe they can "cure" lesbian women through sexual violence. Queer organisations now reject the term and speak of homophobic sexual violence. It means the same thing.
The paradox: at the time, South Africa already had one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It expressly prohibits discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, and same-sex couples have been able to marry since 2006. On paper, the country was a model. On the street, things looked different.
Four men were charged and two convicted. One received a life sentence. On leaving court, he is said to have said that he was not sorry. The judge, however, did not take into account that Eudy Simelane's sexual orientation played a role in the motive. For many activists, that was a second blow.
She has not been forgotten. Since 2016, an annual memorial lecture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal has honoured her, and her football boots and medals are now kept in the Gay and Lesbian Archives in Johannesburg.