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I ran out of steam, but she was still looking at me as if she did not believe a word I was saying.

“Mokgethi, my child, just stop it. This is not like you.”

I looked at her, wishing that I could disappear into the ground.

“Stop this nonsense, Mokgethi.”

The thing I hate most about Mamafa is that he is always right about things. I took his advice after this confrontation – I held my tongue and pretended that I didn't care what they said about me. Not caring worked. They slowly shut up. But the pretence of not caring about what people said behind my back ate at me – I couldn't sleep without having to battle with it.

In the end it was Shatale who rescued me. When he said those words to me, he relieved me of my burden. I didn't care what anyone was saying any more – I knew the truth. They could say Mokgethi was once one of Shatale's girlfriends, I could never erase that “fact” from my life, but I didn't have to make it the truth.

This is the problem with my community. I am just a young girl. I did not go to Shatale and say to him, “I want to have sex with you.” I never did that. You can say that Lebo provoked him but Lebo is also just a young girl and Shatale should have reprimanded and punished her for doing what she did. Community, please stop turning a blind eye and blaming us, because even though I will grow up there will forever be a Mokgethi and a Lebo doing Grade Twelve and nothing will ever change if you keep running away from it.

There was only one teacher who spoke to me about this Mokgethi-Lebo-Shatale saga – Miss Kgopa. She called me into her office and told me that she had been hearing things about me and Shatale:

“Are they true, Mokgethi?”

“No, they are not true. It is just that ...”

She believed me even though she didn't know me and we had never talked outside the classroom.

“Did he ever say anything to you?”

“Yes.”

“Mokgethi, I believe you and I believe in you. I believe that you are the one that I will point to when I am old, I believe that I will say to my grandchildren, ‘I used to teach that woman. I taught that woman.' And I will say it proudly. But I also worry because I know that it is very easy to mess things up, it is very easy to end up like the many there are that make me very shameful of my work. Please do not mess up, my girl. I believe in you too fiercely to see you end up like all the others.”

She smiled and I smiled back.

“I am finished.”

Miss Kgopa then apparently approached Shatale and they talked. After that he never again said anything to me about anything that didn't concern my schoolwork, but Miss Kgopa's relationship with Shatale suffered and it was rumoured that he wanted her out of his school.

Except for Miss Kgopa, the community and its leaders have never confronted Shatale. They know what he is doing to us, all the young girls, but they still speak to him, they still wave back at him when he hoots as he passes them in his car. They only talk behind his back. They never tell him what they know to his face and make him shameful for his acts. And yet they, this community, made Mokgethi shameful for things that I had not even done.

But this is the curse of Teyageneng; in this community nobody respects anybody. My community is a community in shambles; there is nothing holding it together. This community will only show you care if they are going to gain something from it.

There is nothing happening in this community; we are like a commercial farm here for the purposes of making ... Well, put it this way – this year I have only seen people canvassing for votes. The resource centre that used to act as a library is closed and only termites are reading the books, absolutely no recreational activity is going on and the few recreational facilities that are here have been vandalised.

The Teyageneng Youth Club is no more. I wished so much to be part of it when Chris was still running it and generating funds for it, everybody did, but it also closed, just like everything else.

There is nothing here any more that anyone from Teyageneng can be proud of. Why? Because the pillars of this community are the likes of Shatale and nothing can grow while they are in charge.

Shatale once told Lebo:

“When you are living, you have to grow. To live is to grow. When you are living you have to outgrow things. I want things, and I have them, then I outgrow them.”

That is what happened. Shatale wanted Lebo, had her, then outgrew her in a period of less than three months. Lebo was again boyfriendless and the next in the queue came in to claim her.

“Girl, a beautiful girl as beautiful as I am should enjoy all the men she can before her beauty is no more and she gets no attention from any man,” she said, proudly defending her wild ways, like a prisoner serving a life sentence.

After Shatale had had his way with Lebo, we were kind of back together. Though my bodyguards didn't like it much, Lebo is my classmate and sits right next to me every day. It was then that I heard all her tales of Mr LS's tenderness and love, manipulation and sex. And I thought that if I were a good writer I would write about all of this.

Legally, Lebo is a rape case. She was fifteen. Whether she was enjoying it, whether she was in love, she is still legally a rape case by virtue of the fact that she was under sixteen when all of this happened. Tumelo, Mathata, Tshepo and Shatale – he is the worst of all as he knew that she was underage – are all criminals.

Little Bonolo

The worst thing in this community is that most of our male teachers are the ones teaching us, the Lebos of the community, sexual education. They do it on a one-on-one tutorial basis. One can understand a sugar daddy – I am not saying that sugar daddies are okay, but one can understand them. One can say that they are social cripples, but a teacher, a senior teacher and, worst of all, a principal ...

I told myself long ago that none of them would ever “tutor” me. They have tried and tried but I always say no. They have their schemes, their tricks and their traps, but I know them all. My fear now is that they will rape me. After which there will be nothing I can do. Ask Little Bonolo, she knows only too well. At the age of eleven the community ridiculed and blamed her, she became a social outcast because her class teacher, a senior teacher at that, a husband and father of six, Letshele, raped Little Bonolo.

The community said that “she wanted it”, but how can an eleven-year-old girl want to be raped? The community said that Little Bonolo was trying to extort money from Letshele, but how can an eleven-year-old girl think of extorting money from her class teacher? The community said that Little Bonolo was Letshele's mistress and she ran to the police because he didn't want to give her money any more. But how can an eleven-year-old girl be someone's mistress?

I know that most people in our country see it only on television or read about it in the newspapers but here in my community, I, we, live with these things every day. Here we do not have POWA or any other organisation for the protection of children and women's rights. We live side by side with the crimes.

Little Bonolo laid charges and the law took its first step: the accused was arrested. He didn't deny the charges but defended himself by saying that they were lovers. The police did their work; they didn't have any doubts at all that Little Bonolo was telling them the truth.

At this point the community should have given its full support to Little Bonolo, but instead they decided that she was a criminal. They judged, found her guilty and began gossiping and pointing their fingers at her.

The police protected Little Bonolo, but this is not always the case. I know another young girl, Dineo, who suffered at their hands. Dineo does not go to my school but to Ditau High. When she was about thirteen it was said that her boyfriend, a businessman-entrepreneur and a father to multiple children, Pontsho, heard allegations that she was having an affair with one of her teachers. When he asked her about this she denied it and swore on her life. One day the truth came out and Pontsho got very mad and did the young Dineo grievous bodily harm. She regained consciousness in Mapulaneng Hospital, where she had been taken after the attack, and the nurses convinced her to lay a charge against Pontsho.

Dineo went to the police station and told her story, which needed no telling because it was written all over her face. When she had finished telling the officers what had happened to her, she was told to wait a moment. The police then called her boyfriend, telling him that “there is a girl by the name of Dineo Mashego charging you with assault. She says that you are the one who beat her.”

He admitted the crime very arrogantly:

“Ja! Sebara, se a resa sa motho. A ke sentsha bofebe.”

Yes! Sebara.
“Sebara” refers to one's in-laws and here at home is popularly used among friends.
Yes! Sebara, it is telling the truth. I was extracting the bitch from it.

Then they, the police, asked him what they should do.

He called Dineo and when she did not answer her phone he called the police station and asked to speak with Dineo at the charge office. They gave her the phone.

“What are you doing?”

She didn't know what to say.

“You think that I do not know, sefebe? I know where you are. I can see. I have eyes everywhere, watching. Go ahead, open a docket – I will visit jail but you will sleep at the mortuary. Sefebe, I will be out in time to help dig your grave.”

He cut the call. Dineo didn't even say goodbye to the police officers, she just walked out, hoping that they would not try and stop her. They didn't.

Today, Dineo is mother to Pontsho's little girl. The law failed Dineo; it betrayed her.

The law didn't fail Little Bonolo but justice did. As I understand it, when the investigating officer finishes his part, he passes the case on to the state prosecutor, whose job it is to see that justice is done. But in this case that didn't happen.

At their first meeting, Little Bonolo had to go through the whole thing again, in detail, for the prosecutor, which she did. When she had finished, the prosecutor looked at Little Bonolo, then at the paperwork on his table and then back at her.

“I can prosecute and he will rot in jail.”

He looked into the distance and then back at her.

“That is what the law says, which is the way white people do their thing, but our ancestors did not do things this way. If a man committed a crime and was found guilty, then he would pay four cows – one to the king, one to the community and two to the victim – and then we would all continue living in peace. The white man's law will take the guilty party to jail, but you will not get any compensation. Justice will be done, true, but you will still be raped. I am not saying that if we make him pay it will undo the rape, no, but he will be paying you directly for raping you.”

He looked at Little Bonolo's aunt.

“What I am asking, my sister, is this: can we not just deal with this as a community? Make him pay you a certain amount of money? The white man's law will put him in jail but I do not think that will satisfy you. Whereas if you make him pay for doing this, he pays and we are all fine.”

Little Bonolo's aunt was a cook at a primary school. She didn't understand that the prosecutor should have been working on behalf of the whole community, not just on behalf of Little Bonolo; that his focus should have been on stopping Letshele from ever doing what he had done to Little Bonolo to any other eleven-year-old.

Letshele told his friends that he paid fifteen thousand rand for his freedom. And today he is going about in the community, proud of his position as a senior teacher at Seaparankwe Primary School: “Thirty-three years I have been working in this school ...”

What Little Bonolo went through, I know it because I nearly went through it too. A year before he raped Little Bonolo, Letshele tried to rape me too. The only difference between us is that halfway through it I remembered to run and that's just what I did. Apparently he once claimed “They want me!” when he was drunk. Yes, he was interesting and fun to be around, but I know I never “wanted” him – he was my teacher.

“Do you want a cooldrink?”

“Yes.”

“Buy a cooldrink of your choice.”

He gave me the money and I took the bottle that he kept in the classroom and ran to buy a cooldrink. At the nearest spaza shop they didn't have my choice, so I ran to the next, they too didn't have, so I ran on. I finally found what I wanted at the café and by the time I had run back to school I was all sweaty and breathing hard.

“You didn't have to run,” he said, caressing away my sweat.

He took out an expensive-looking glass from the bottom drawer of his desk. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Yes.”

“No, you cannot keep a secret.”

“I can.”

He took out a bottle of brandy, poured some of it into the glass, then put it back in the bottom drawer of his desk.

“This is my secret,” he said, picking up the glass. “No one can know that I drink brandy at work. Mokgethi, if you ever tell anyone I will lose my job.”

“I am not going to tell anybody.” I shook my head, meaning it.

“And also do not tell a living soul that I bought you a cooldrink. It is our little secret.”

Honestly, I told nobody about any of it. Three months passed and during that time I drank a dozen cooldrinks and ate three chocolate bars with him. I even shared his birthday cake. I told no one, even though there was this thing inside me, a need, a want, to say to my friends:

“Hey! I celebrated our teacher's birthday with him. He bought a cake and I shared it with him.”

But I couldn't tell anyone because:

“If you tell it will spoil everything because people will be jealous that you have a teacher for a friend, and then we won't be able to be friends any more.” He paused. “You have to keep things like this a secret because people are very jealous and they will start saying bad things about us.”

We would walk together out of the school gates, talking all the way, the teacher and the pupil. And there is nothing wrong with walking with a teacher, male or female, and there should never be anything wrong with it. In fact, it is the most perfect relationship a pupil can have with those who are working hard to secure her future, with a senior teacher, but ...

The moment arrived when, in his mind, the cherry was ripe enough to be plucked from the tree. It happened one quiet Friday afternoon when the school was deserted. When I entered the classroom, he put his hands under my arms, picked me up and sat me down on his desk. The program that was running in my mind froze – it was not encoding or decoding any action as he began to have his way with me. Tears came out of my eyes and he licked them off with his tongue as his hands continued to caress and caress. The mixture of brandy and smoke on his breath was suffocating.

My tears kept flowing as he pushed my legs apart and put his hand inside my underwear. My thinking was still frozen – only my tears were flowing. He fell to his knees, pulling down my not so clean underwear and beginning to kiss me down there. My skirt was covering his head to just below his shoulders. Suddenly the program responded: RUN! RUN AWAY! I kicked him in the face, not intentionally but I kicked him all the same, and he fell flat on his back. And that gave me time to get out of the door and run away.

Exactly the same thing happened to Little Bonolo. The only difference between us is the last part of the story. Running away didn't occur to Little Bonolo or maybe Letshele learned from his mistake with Mokgethi. Either way, he had his way with her and got what he had been scheming for.

I kept what had happened to me a secret – I didn't know who to tell – and it is still a secret. Maybe if I had told someone about Letshele, what happened to Little Bonolo might not have happened. But then, she told someone and action was taken only for justice to fail her.

Little Bonolo is a strong young girl; she has smiled through great adversity. She pulled herself through, without any counselling and nearly no support from those who are supposed to support her, kept going to school and at the end of the year she passed her examinations very well. At high school she proved that she was not pushed out by Letshele – she was promoted from Grade Nine to Grade Ten. For this I respect and love her, and I pray that she finds peace in her heart.

I don't know what happens to one after they have been forced into sex. How do they feel about sex? How do the feel about men? What I do know is that Little Bonolo somehow found comfort in sex while she was an outcast. She found comfort in men, who themselves were not really giving comfort but using her.

Little Bonolo and Pheladi, at one point they were like the latest fashion. But at least Pheladi had somebody to say, “Hey! Stop that!” Even if she did ignore them. Little Bonolo didn't have anybody to reprimand her. They say that she was born premature, that her mother died giving birth to her. I know she is an only child, which makes me think this is probably true. Her father works in Joburg and probably has another wife because Little Bonolo is here with her aunt, who to be honest is not much of a caretaker.

Pheladi is still doing Grade Ten today. Not that she is stupid, no, it is just that when one is celebrated, and doing all the things that the celebrated do, it becomes hard to keep up with the books. Little Bonolo has slowed her pace – though, unlike Pheladi, this is her decision – and these days she is concentrating on her schoolwork as this community slowly forgets what it came to know her for.

If I did have sex at eleven, if I had been raped at eleven, I wouldn't be any better than Little Bonolo. Little Bonolo is just one of many in my community who are preyed on just for being themselves. It becomes worse when you are beautiful and o pakile, then the community starts to think that you are influencing the break-up of families and marriages. When you walk past the old women, they close their noses, irritated. You greet them. They just look at you and spit after you have passed, forgetting that you are just a young girl.

I didn't want to be an Ouma, a Tebogo, a Sophie ... Well, the list is endless and they too didn't want to be what they are either. Ouma didn't want to have a baby at twelve. Tebogo didn't want to have three abortions within a year, to walk out of the house, naked and bleeding, going to die in the toilet on a hot day. Sophie too didn't want to die having a backstreet abortion. I am a young girl, just as they were. We are intelligent, we know things, but we are still young girls and there are many things that we do not know yet. An old trick is a new trick to someone who does not know it.

Little Bonolo at eleven. She may have been a rose in full bloom to some. She may have made them hold their breath as they thought this or that. But that doesn't make her responsible for their actions and it doesn't un-child her. She accused a senior teacher of raping her but all the community could do was point their fingers at her. The community has been giving its children to Letshele to teach for five days a week for more than thirty years, in the hope that he will give them a better future. An eleven-year-old cannot drain away more than thirty years of trust:

“She is lying.”

“She wanted it.”

“She was trying to extort money from him.”

“For many, many years before this little girl was even born we took our girls to that school and the good Mr Letshele never did anything other than teach them. Yes, he drinks himself to death on weekends but he is a good teacher, the best our children have ever had and they will testify to that.”