When 16-year-old Liyabona Mabishi decided to go out with her 18-year-old friend to pick up one of their friends to their party, she didn’t know it would lead to her death. This happened in Nkanini, Khayelitsha, southeast of Cape Town on the 21st of March 2020.
According to the report on PinkNews, Liyabona Mabishi, an 11th-grade student, was walking with her friend when she bumped into one of the attackers. She immediately apologised, and she was stabbed about 13 times with a knife. The attackers also left her friend “gravely injured” while she tried to stop them.
At the time of the murder, it was suspected that the attack might be a hate crime related to Mabishi’s sexuality, Western Cape Community Safety and Liaison MEC Albert Fritz said in a statement.
“I felt powerless like my soul was exiting my body. I have always kept her by my side fearing for her life,” her mother, Philiswa Mabishi told PinkNews. “I feared that she might be a victim of corrective rape. I never thought she would be killed like this.”
Five people were arrested for the murder and had appeared briefly in the Khayelitsha Magistrate’s Court. They were also hoping to apply for bail. The LGBTQI+ community members in Capetown, however, have started a petition to have her alleged killers denied bail. The petition currently has over 700 signatures.
“I want people to stand up for Liyabona, who did not deserve to die the way she did. She was an innocent kid who lived her own life, who meant no harm but just bumped into a guy like a normal person does,” Liyabona Mabishi’s friend, Simnikiwe Gqithiso, who witnessed her murder said. “She never knew that mistakenly bumping into a person might end up putting her in a coffin because of her sexuality. She deserves justice right now, and better than what the justice system is giving her. She deserves to rest in peace knowing that her killers are arrested and will spend years in jail for what they did to her.”
“Gender-based violence and homophobia have absolutely no place in our society. I condemn these acts in the strongest terms. Each of us has a right to equality and dignity, and a duty to stand up to and report such transgressions,” Fritz said.
The Chairperson of Free Gender chairperson, Funeka Soldaat, told IOL, “We constantly have to look behind our shoulders. The killing of Liyabona was unnecessary and we don’t care what she could’ve said leading to the incident. They had no right to brutally kill her because she was lesbian”
“Brutal killings and abuse of homosexual people is a violation of human rights. You don’t have to persuade someone about liking a particular person. We also need to run away from the fact that when something has happened to a queer person that it becomes an LGBTQI+ issue alone, but it is also a women issue or a community issue. We are part and parcel of the families and communities that we live in,” Funeka Soldaat added.
