Precious Mahere* is a transgender woman from Zimbabwe facing discrimination from both South Africans and people from her home country. “They would say: ‘We don’t allow this in Zimbabwe, so you run away to come and do this kind of shit here.’
“I am one of the people who say: ‘Home is the best’ ... Coming to this country, I was thinking that I was going to a little haven, but it was not true.” — Pukkie Tsonyeni of Tanzania, from the book My Home, My Body, My Dreams: Reflections of LGBTQI Refugees in South Africa.
The 12 years she has been living here have also not been easy. “Especially if you are a foreigner. Sometimes if you are in the taxi, and you don’t speak a South African language, there’s too much discrimination. All the people will start talking: ‘Why did you run away from your country?’” Forced to go to hospital “because I had damage to my eyes”, she tried opening a case against her attacker, “but the police dismissed this; the police just laugh”.
Even with severe attacks or rapes, these are not reported because of fears of further harassment. “People are suffering just because they are scared of the police. We can’t even talk about training. That has been done. It’s just that I think they chose to ignore issues of the trans community,” Chikalogwe says.
The report found that 7% of perpetrators of hate crimes were police officers, 8% of victims were trans women and more than half of victims were not born in South Africa. The most frequently recorded “motivations for prejudice” were nationality , sexual orientation , religion and gender identity or expression .
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