Rape Crisis: A lifeline for survivors in the ongoing battle against sexual violence

9 Apr 2025

Rape Crisis pioneered the first containment counselling service at Cape Town’s inaugural Thuthuzela Care Centre, a model now adopted nationwide. Spotlight visited staff at the soon to be 50-year-old organisation’s three offices and spoke with a rape survivor who has since become a volunteer at their Khayelitsha branch.

When Zanele* was eight years old, she was raped by her “cousin-brother” while playing hide and seek in the Eastern Cape village of Peddie, she says.

“I ran inside the rondavel to hide behind his mother’s bed. He said, ‘Don’t come out, I will hide you’. That’s when he started to rape me. He lifted my dress and lay on top of me. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘Trust me.’ He was my older cousin. I was scared of him. I asked him to stop but he didn’t.

“Afterwards, I dressed and went home. As I walked into the yard of my house, I felt numb. I thought this is the first time I’ll ever lie to my mother. All I could do was cry. My mother asked me what was wrong. I said I had a headache, and she gave me painkillers,” she recalls.

Zanele says she lived in silence for about seven years after the rape, and later started having frightening flashbacks when she had boyfriends.

The story is one that many women can relate to, says the now 46-year-old, as she opens up to Spotlight in a room typically used for sewing classes at Rape Crisis’ Khayelitsha office.

Zanele turned to the organisation for help when she was 23 years old.

“From the moment I walked in, I felt welcome. Somebody showed me where to sit in the waiting room; they offered me tea and bread and then a counsellor took me to a counselling room, and so I began my healing journey.”

This journey involved detailing her rape for the first time. She says it brought up emotions of anger, sadness, and powerlessness. After each session, Zanele says she began to understand that the rape wasn’t her fault and slowly started to heal, learning to love herself again.

She also joined a Rape Crisis support group, including a sewing and Speak Out group, where she connected with other women.

“I realised many women are in the same situation. We have different stories, but we have one thing in common: rape. We… would cry together and console each other. But we’d come out laughing and strong. We’d stop talking about rape and talk about life — our boyfriends, marriage or our children. Or even a movie we’d seen. We always came out happy,” she says.

Almost half a century

Founded in 1976 as a volunteer-run feminist collective, Rape Crisis became an NPO in 1997.

Today the Cape Town-based organisation supports survivors of rape and sexual violence from three offices located in Observatory, Athlone, and Khayelitsha. It also works to address what it sees as flaws in related legislation.

“We’re the oldest feminist gender-based violence (GBV) organisation in Africa, possibly the world,” says Michelle Bergh, a training and development coordinator, who has been with the organisation for more than two decades.

Spotlight visited all three branches. They are airy, tranquil spaces with bright comfortable couches, bookshelves, a welcoming kitchen to make tea, and, maybe most strikingly, filled with a powerful feminine energy.

When Spotlight arrived at the Athlone office just after 9.30am, counsellors were already conducting sessions in all three counselling rooms. Across the three branches, nearly 50 active counsellors work on a rotational basis.

The Khayelitsha facility is nestled in a vibrant and spacious house, featuring administrative offices, a kitchen, a bathroom, and three counselling rooms where survivors seek support and guidance each day.

Counselling, training and advocacy

The organisation’s core work is counselling conducted by volunteer counsellors. It takes place in-person, over the phone, and on WhatsApp helplines.

To create awareness about GBV and rape, the organisation runs workshops in schools and academic institutions, corporates, prisons, clinics, and youth centres.

“For example, we run a six-session series of lectures at the University of Cape Town medical school, on how doctors can best support survivors of sexual assault and rape,” says Barbara Williams, an operations manager and an 18-year veteran of the organisation.

“Members of the South African Police Service attend workshops on how to treat rape survivors so they don’t experience secondary trauma, and can remain on their journey of seeking justice through the criminal justice system.”

The organisation also does work in schools and with corporates.

The advocacy programme lobbies for specialised services for rape survivors, including special offences courts to deal exclusively with sexual offences and increasing the number of one-stop Thuthuzela Care Centres in the country. (See Spotlight’s previous reporting on the centres here.)

The organisation also supports rape survivors and their families in matters before the sexual offences courts.

“Many people aren’t familiar with the court system, so the court supporters – who are based full-time at courts in Cape Town, Parow and Khayelitsha, explain what they can expect in the trial, who’s who in the case, and of course, what their own rights are,” says Williams.

‘Rallying the community’

Back at the Khayelitsha office, manager Zodwa Thomas-Daweti highlights the office’s strategic location near key services like the local social development office, a Magistrate’s court, a police station and a Thuthuzela Care Centre.

“We’re in walking distance from the Khayelitsha District Hospital, where there is a Thuthuzela Care Centre, so rape survivors being helped at the centre can get a referral letter, and simply walk over to us for counselling,” she says.

Mandisa Mbotshelwa sees her role as an advocacy coordinator as one focused on rallying the community to push for specialised services for survivors of sexual offences.

She says, for instance, that Rape Crisis and other activist groupings ran a successful campaign to call for specialised services within the sexual offences courts.

“We wanted the people inside the courtrooms to be specially trained for sexual offences cases. We made a lot of noise and it had results. We also managed to advocate for the Khayelitsha Magistrate’s Court to have a specialised waiting room for survivors. At the moment, we’re advocating for more Thuthuzela Care Centres. There are 62 around the country at the moment, and it’s not enough.”

Not all rape survivors report their rapes, and, in the words of many of the women interviewed, “rape is common, and under-reported”.

South Africa’s first national study on GBV, conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council, found that around 7.8 million women had experienced physical and sexual violence at some point in their lives, with black women being the most affected. Crime statistics from the South African Police Service show that 11,803 rapes were reported from 1 October to 31 December 2024. Additionally, there were more than 3,000 cases of sexual assault, attempted sexual offences, and contact sexual offences combined.

‘Positive people’

Kathleen Dey dedicated 26 years of her life to Rape Crisis, including 13 years as director, until she stepped down in 2021.

She tells Spotlight that at the heart of Rape Crisis is a group of positive people.

“There’s laughter, there’s bustle, but also calm and peace. Survivors feel safe to tell their stories, and our counsellors see survivors recover and grow — and it’s a collective endeavour.”

Yet Dey is under no illusion that ending gender-based violence and rape is an easy task.

“We don’t believe it’s possible to end violence against women. It’s always existed and always will. It’s not like we don’t believe that attitudes should change (though), or that we don’t believe in gender equality or that we shouldn’t attack the root causes of rape in South Africa. Even if we believe it will never change, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try… to do as much as we possibly can. So, we do a lot of awareness raising and gender transformation work,” she says.

“Ours is a very strategic, pragmatic organisation that wants to see the South African government deliver services to survivors that are appropriate to their needs in the aftermath of a violent incident, all the way through to the end of the trial,” says Dey.

“That means immediate emergency healthcare and the ongoing healthcare that comes after that. The health risks associated with rape are very intense — whether it is pregnancy, HIV, sexually transmitted disease, or emotional crisis,” she says.

Nazma Hendricks, who became the director of Rape Crisis in March 2021 after more than 15 years with the organisation, explains that the idea of ending rape has evolved, much like the nature of gender-based violence itself, which shifts over time and varies across communities.

“A couple of years ago we had a vision to end rape, but we relooked at that. Our services are to support survivors and help them live productive lives.”

Hendricks says that Rape Crisis, which supports people aged 14 and older, has witnessed a steady increase in the number of individuals seeking help each year. Last year alone, the organisation engaged with more than 10,000 people, along with their families and supporters.

Surviving USAid cuts

She says they successfully pivoted when the US government recently halted its support.

“When this hit us, even though the USAid funding was confirmed, I removed Trump’s money from the budget,” she says.

Hendricks says the organisation is much more financially sustainable than in previous years.

“When I started in 2004, we had a budget of R4.5-million and we had 12 staff members. Twenty years later, we have a budget of R23-million and close to 50 staff members.”

She says their fundraising efforts have been paying off.

“We have a good reputation that precedes us in the world. We recently heard that a donor which has donated towards core funding for the past 10 years has just committed to further funding.”

Hendricks recalls that during the January memorial service for former Rape Crisis director and anti-apartheid activist Leslie Liddell, several women in attendance asked about the organisation’s funding.

“I said: ‘We’re fine. We have people leaving money in their wills to Rape Crisis — 20,000 pounds here, 30,000 euros there.’” DM

*Not her real name

This article was first published by Spotlight – health journalism in the public interest. Sign up to the Spotlight newsletter.

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South Africa

Almost half a century

Counselling, training and advocacy

‘Rallying the community’

‘Positive people’

Surviving USAid cuts