A truly brave woman: Meet ‘Lion Mama’ who fought off her daughter’s rapists

In a country that’s full of lions, the true king of the jungle, how ironic is that a person making great news here happens to be called ‘Lion Mama?’

Ever heard about Lion-Mama?

South Africa is one of the world’s most enduring enigmas.

The land of the some of the most wonderous mammals that have ever walked on the face of the earth, submerged in marvellous greens and in sync with the true benevolent Mother Nature, there’s never a dull day in the life of South Africa.

The country that underwent such an immense racial tumult during the peak of the ‘Apartheid’ has also been a landmark where cultural integrity stands. It’s a country that arose together to be hailed as the ‘Rainbow Nation!’

This is, without a doubt, an identity that has struck by the country and how? Even today, when the cricket teams and rugby units take to the field- the collective identity of the nation springs with immense joy; South Africa being referred to as Protea Fire!

And now, it appears that one of the finest additions to this Protean spark is the Lion Mama of South Africa. So who exactly is Lion Mama and why is she creating a global buzz.

Well, to cut the long story short, Nukobonga Qampi, better known as Lion Mama today, successfully fought back against the wretched group of rapists who targeted her daughter.

Lion Mama, an elderly lady, surprisingly minus any male help around, ended up killing one of the three men who were raping her daughter. And not only that, she also injured the others of the gangly pack.

Rape, it needn’t be put, is one of the most heinous crimes of the world and it’s something that confronts women all the time, anywhere on the planet. What is most important is that there are women like this daring Lion Mama didn’t grow weak or show a remote sign of weakness when confronted with the ghoulish horror of her daughter being raped.

It was thanks to a public outcry that the enquiry surrounding Lion Mama having murdered one of the criminals was stopped.

But BBC reported in great detail about this astonishing true story; one that’s causing positive ripples all around the world.

Here’s what you got to read-

It was the middle of the night when the telephone call came, waking Nokubonga from her sleep.

The girl at the other end of the line was just 500m away – and she said Nokubonga’s daughter, Siphokazi, was being raped by three men they all knew well.

Nokubonga’s first response was to call the police, but there was no answer. She knew, anyway, that it would take them time to reach her village, in the rolling green and brown hills of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province.

She was the only person that could help.

“I was scared, but then I was forced to go because it was my daughter,” she said.

“I was thinking that when I get there, she might be dead… Because she knew the perpetrators, and because they knew her and knew she knows them, they might think they had to kill her so she couldn’t report them.