Lesbian teen murdered after being viciously stabbed 13 times on Human Rights Day
Liyabona Mabishi, 16, was brutally murdered by three men just because she bumped into one of them. (Facebook)
All she did was accidentally bump into a man while walking with a friend. Minutes later, she was dead.
A South African lesbian teen was stabbed 13 times to death and her friend gravely injured by three men Saturday in an attack that has stunned the country, occurring on Human Rights Day.
As swathes of South Africa celebrated the establishment of the Human Rights Commission, Liyabona Mabishi, 16, was fighting for her life, Daily Voice reported.
Lesbian stabbed to death for knocking into a man.
On the day of a pal’s birthday, Liyabona and her 18-year-old friend went to fetch another who was coming to the party in Nkanini, Khayelitsha, southeast of Cape Town.
The 11th-grade student was simply walking with her friend when she bumped into one of the three attackers.
She apologised for the accident, and then the knife struck her. The man proceeded to stab Liyabona 13 times.
Her friend, trying desperately to stop them, was also injured.
Victim’s mother: ‘I felt powerless like my soul was exiting my body.’
“I have always kept her by my side fearing for her life,” said mother Philiswa Mabishi.
“I feared that she might be a victim of corrective rape. I never thought she would be killed like this.
“I always made sure I know where she is and when it is getting dark, I would search for her so she can come home.”
“I suddenly lost strength,” Philiswa explained when she received a phone call about her daughter.
“I felt powerless like my soul was exiting my body.
“I asked my brother to go, she died while on the way to Khayelitsha Hospital.”
While the police said they are investigating the incident, lesbian advocacy group Free Gender told the paper: “It’s very disturbing and triggering that something like this happens in our communities.
“It is very sad to live in fear as a homosexual person because you don’t know what might happen to you.
“It is not fair at all.”
LGBT+ rights in South Africa.
Overall, Africa has a spotty and sluggish track record with LGBT+ rights, but it is one that, activist stress, is haunted by its colonial past.
Despite much of the continent having a rich, diverse history of embracing same-sex relations, intercourse between men was prohibited by law imported by colonialist countries.
LGBT+ South Africans wave Pride flags at Durban Pride Festival. (RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP/Getty Images)
While the impact of the apartheid era haunts South Africa, thanks to tireless activism, it has vastly overturned its colonialist history.
Since the early 1990s, LGBT+ South Africans have enjoyed a wave of bills that have enshrined rights onto the community. Indeed, it became the first – and only – African nation to legalise marriage equality.
Although, colonial attitudes continue to creep in, often couples with traditional South African mores, meaning that homophobic violence, particularly corrective rape, is rampant outside major cities.
In recent years, South Africa has suffered a surge of anti-LGBT violence as personal attitudes continue to chaff with laws.
