A 24-year-old rape survivor, Zizo Apleni, had spoken out against rape and other forms of gender violence in her new book, My Father Took My Innocence.

Apleni, a gender activist, encouraged women to speak out against gender violence at the start of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.

In the book, she narrated how she was raped by her father between 2001 and 2013.  She said the first incident occurred when she was just seven.

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Zizo said she used to visit her father often.

“As I was young, I didn’t know what he was doing was wrong. I only found out what he was doing after our hostel manager taught us not to have sex with our boyfriends.

“When I got home, I told my father what our hostel manager told us. He started threatening me and said I should never report it, because no one would believe me,” she said in a South Africa’s Daily Sun report.

Her mum didn’t know about it until 2013 when Zizo fell pregnant.

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 “I told her my father had been raping me for years. We reported it to the police and he was bust the same day.

“I was helped to abort the baby.

“In 2016, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. My mum was very supportive.”