Tshepang

In 2001 South Africa was devastated by the news of a brutal rape of a nine-month-old child who came to be known as baby Tshepang. The media reported that she had been gang-raped by a group of six men. Later it was discovered that the men had been wrongfully accused and that the infant had instead been raped and sodomised by her mother’s boyfriend. Once the story of baby Tshepang hit the headlines, the scab was torn off a festering wound, and hundreds of similar stories followed.

Weaving together ‘twenty thousand stories’ (the number of reported child rapes in South Africa each year), Tshepang tells a story of love, forgiveness and the difficulties of coming to terms with a violation of this magnitude.

Lara Foot Newton, one of six winners in the international Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, is a South African playwright, theatre director and producer.