Elma Robyn Montsumi, 39, is a sex worker in South Africa. Elma was arrested for alleged drug possession on the 9th of April and taken into custody afterwards at Cape Town’s Mowbray police station. According to South Africa’s lockdown regulations, she was supposed to be released on bail. But that never happened. Three days later, however, news circulated that she had died by suicide. This was confirmed in a statement put out by advocacy organisations in South Africa; Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), Sisonke, the National Movement of Sex Workers, and Triangle Project.
“Robin’s partner reported that he and some of her friends from the area were able to communicate with her by shouting from the outside and she would call back on how she was doing. They reported she said on Saturday [11th April] that she felt ill and was vomiting. According to her friends, she did not respond [on] Sunday morning [12th April] when they tried to call on her and when her partner got to the police station, there was an ambulance, and bystanders told him that it was Robyn inside and that she had hanged herself. Our lobbying officer went inside the police station to inquire, and she was simply told that Robyn had been taken to Groote Schuur Hospital. Robyn’s family, on Tuesday, went to Mowbray police station and was told that the detective who came to the station just before noon to book Robyn found her body in the cells.”
Elma Robyn Montsumi, a sex worker, was arrested on 9 April and died three days later in police custody at Mowbray Police Station. Why wasn't she released on bail in terms of lockdown regulations? Who was the last person to see her alive? #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/mQRULRKGCX
— Dr. Sithembile Mbete (@sthembete) June 2, 2020
Based on reports, South Africa’s Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) has launched an investigation into her death. “The lady was arrested in possession of drugs, she was arrested [and kept] in a single police cell where she hanged herself. Nobody has been arrested or held responsible for the death of the woman,” IPID spokesman, Ndileka Cola told News24. Another spokesperson, Sontaga Seisa told the Cape Times said, “We received this death in police custody note of a 39-year-old woman in Mowbray police station. Our investigation is ongoing. Nobody has been arrested or held responsible for the death of the woman.”
Her case is not an isolated one. The Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) says that since the beginning of the lockdown, there has been an increase in the incidents of gender-based violence and police brutality in the country. It’s why SWEAT has referred the case to the South African Human Rights Commission. For them, “it also forms part of the HRC’s broader investigation into the persecution of homeless people in the Mowbray area during the time the police were trying to pressurise people to voluntarily go the Strandfontein camp.”
“The news of Robyn’s death is devastating. We knew her as a passionate activist aware of her rights. Those who interacted with her prior to her arrest remember her as being upbeat and the reports of an apparent suicide are baffling,” the joint statement by the advocacy organisations reads.
