CASTIGATED AND CELEBRATED

Published on: 24 September 2009

Had the acceptance by South Africans of athlete Caster Semenya's difference been extended to murdered footballer Eudy Simelane she may have still been alive today, writes Mark Gevisser.

Two highly accomplished, young, black, female South African athletes are currently in the news. One came home to a hero's welcome and got to meet the president. The other is dead, her alleged assailants in a Delmas court this week on trial for her rape and murder.

Caster Semenya, 18, won the 800m at the world athletics championships last week; Eudy Simelane had been a member of Banyana Banyana, the women's national football team, and was training to be a professional referee when she was murdered in KwaThema aged 29 last year.

Both women appear to have been punished - one in the most severe way possible - for their difference and their excellence. Semenya has been dealt the humiliation of having her gold medal withheld until she proves she is a woman.

And although the prosecutor failed to establish a connection between Simelane's sexual orientation and her murder, her friends are convinced she was the victim of an epidemic of violence against lesbians, who are subjected to what is sometimes called "corrective rape" by men seeking to punish or cure them; or who feel that butch women are competing with them by straying into their territory.

Read the full article [here].