The majority of South Africans have done this in their lifetime; stand on a road, pointing up or down depending on the region to signal a taxi to stop.
So it was nothing out of the ordinary for the then 27-year-old Palesa Brown to do that on her way back home from work after 5pm on a Friday in August 2005 in the North West.
When the taxi stopped, she climbed in, paid and waited for her stop to come around.
There were nine people inside the taxi, two women and seven men. Not too long after she had gotten in, the women got off one by one and left her with the men.
When she asked the driver to stop where she was going, he ignored her and took a different route. The man sitting next to her showed her a gun and she realised that the taxi driver was in on it too. So were the two women, she later learnt.
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But nothing could have prepared her for the next three days that were to follow at the hands of these men.
“I had recently resigned from my job and I had my payout money in my bank account and so when they took my bank card and asked for the pin I gave it to them, thinking it would save my life.
“When they saw how much was in there, they decided to keep me so they could withdraw more.”
She had a limit on her account and they could not take the money out all at once. Palesa was blind folded. From that Friday until the early hours of Monday morning, they drove around and the men were buying booze and food.
“The rape started in the early hours of Monday morning. At some point the blindfold had fallen off and I had seen their faces. Some wanted to kill me and I pleaded and begged for my life. Internally I was bargaining with God, that if he saved me from this, I would live the rest of my life to serve him and his people.
“I told them I had minor children who needed me and that they should please not kill me. They decided then that instead of killing me, they should rape me instead. So they pulled me out of the taxi and took my pants and underwear off. All seven of them, one by one, they raped me. They did not say anything, each just waited for their turn.”
Palesa says she cried so much until should go not cry anymore.
“I was numb,” she says.
When they were done, they got back inside the taxi, threw her handbag back at her and drove off.
She found her phone in pieces in her bag, put it back together and phoned her service provider to ask where she was.
“I did not recognize where I was and I had an app for locating my phone. The person at Vodacom told me I was in Tembisa and where exactly I was. Then I phoned my aunty and my brother, they arranged an ambulance for me and I was taken to Bara.”
As tragic as this incident was, it was not the first time she had faced hardships.
In 1997, three days before her wedding, her fiancé was killed in a hijacking.
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When she was 16 they suspected she may have cancer and indeed, in 1999 was diagnosed of cervical cancer.
She was abducted and raped in August 2005 and in February of that same year, she had had a stroke.
“I think the stroke happened because of everything that had happened in my life.”
In 2000 she got married, but that ended in 2007 because of domestic violence.
Two years ago, she penned a book about her journey.
“The title is ‘To My Rapist, I Thank You’. The word is a metaphor for everything that has happened in my life without my consent. It is not limited to those seven men. Now I have a show on Soweto TV where people share their stories.
“There are many stories where victims share their stories, but there are not many where a victor can look at a guest and say, ‘I was you, I am you, you will overcome this, look at me’.” The show started on 1 December and plays every Friday.”
Five of her rapists were arrested, but she never followed up on the case because it was not helping with her healing.
“I wanted to heal and I could not go to court back and forth and face those men.”
