Andile Gaelisiwe

Andile Gaelisiwe, a well-known South African singer, is leading the fight to end sexual abuse and violence across her country by creating forums to empower young people to talk about abuse and seek help. Using her extensive connections to celebrities, police, counselors, and teachers, she is getting at the root of why sexual abuse happens and what society can do to stop it.

Sexual abuse is so prevalent in South Africa that the country has become known as the rape capital of the world. One in four women is likely to be raped during her lifetime. So staggering is this statistic that Andile decided something had to be done to confront the problem definitively and openly—using methods that are clear to everyone—rather than condemning abused individuals to suffer alone with their terrible secret.
Discouraged by the lack of options for victims of abuse, Andile launched the Open Disclosure Tour. She draws in high-profile celebrity performers to participate in in-school programs that blend performance and frank discussion about sexual abuse. These tours are the first step to far-reaching societal change. They deliver a powerful message to children in the audience, prompting many to seek treatment through programs that Andile and her diverse team of teachers, counselors, and police have developed. The effort allows abused children to get past the shame, fear, and isolation they feel—and steps toward treatment and healing. The program’s success prompted Andile to found the Open Disclosure Center, the first long-term treatment center for young victims of sexual abuse in South Africa.

As in most parts of the world, talking about sexual abuse and violence in South Africa is not easy. There is a general atmosphere of anti-disclosure—even in a place where the problem is so prevalent that most of the population has some experience with it. Throughout Andile’s research interviews, she discovered surprising similarities between white Afrikaans and black African secrecy toward family problems such as incest, sexual abuse, and rape. Her research shows that reluctance toward disclosure is not unique to any language or ethnic group, and that the stigma of being considered inferior keeps communities silent about the issue. Victims don’t speak about their abuse for fear of being rejected, disbelieved, or blamed.
Children are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. In recent years, the number of abuse cases of very young children has risen which sees to be connected to one particularly dangerous myth in South Africa; having sex with a virgin will cure HIV infection. As a result, children as young as eight months old have been raped. Even if children do speak about their abuse, they have nowhere to go. Their abuser may be the person who feeds them, or closely connected in another way that makes it nearly impossible for a child to feel safe.
There are no long-term treatment centers for school-age children, and emergency intervention and short-term safe houses are insufficient to combat the overwhelming need for services. School social workers, often of the same generation as the students’ parents, are overworked and lack appropriate training. Some crisis lines and suicide prevention programs help keep young people alive at the peak of the crisis, but there is no follow-up strategy, and social networks within communities are so interconnected that it is especially difficult in sensitive cases like incest. Short term solutions often do more damage to young people by leaving them to feel unresolved and vulnerable to further physical and emotional abuse.
Also disheartening is the lack of confidence citizens have in the legal system to protect their rights. Prosecution of sexual offenders is erratic. According to South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority in 2000—the last year for which statistics are available—less than 8 percent of the nation’s 53,000 reported rape cases resulted in a conviction. This figure only accounts for the number of sexual assaults actually reported to authorities. Tragically, sexual abuse also takes place at police stations, where the power dynamic is particularly poignant. As a result, young people often perceive the local police as the enemy rather than an ally.

Andile started her initiative by organizing a series of “Open Disclosure Days” for young people to gauge the scope of the problem and the attitudes of the target population. Participants—the youngest of whom was 9 years old—spoke publicly in a safe environment about their experiences over the course of four initial gatherings. When Andile and her colleagues tried to direct the group toward counseling centers for follow-up treatment, they discovered there were no sexual abuse centers for young people. At that moment, Andile discovered her niche.
She organized a traveling program called the “Open Disclosure Tour” with a diverse team of counselors, celebrities, and police officials to visit schools to empower young people to come forward with their sexual abuse stories. After the counselors take their places in classrooms behind the main auditorium, Andile and the other stars perform and tell their personal stories. Afterwards, they hold frank question-and-answer sessions with the kids—covering HIV/AIDS, reporting assault to local police, and healing. As difficult issues arise, the facilitators encourage students to step outside and speak with the waiting counselors in private. This multi-talented entourage has solved a problem faced by telephone counselors: not knowing where to send young people after the initial breakthrough. At the Open Disclosure Tour, everyone with whom a child needs to speak is assembled in one familiar place.
Andile has forged a partnership with the Department of Public Safety—which funds her tour—and selects schools in established hot crime zones. Local police officers join Andile’s team, along with social welfare workers from the Department of Social Services. Key members of the community are present including: teachers, school directors, and representatives from citizen organizations such as YouthAIDS. Andile has recruited a squad of counselors who specialize in intake, or first interviews, with young people who have experienced sexual violence. In addition, welfare workers provide grocery packages to kids who are afraid of reporting their abuser because he is their main source of food.
Andile carefully hand-picks her South African celebrity partners according to specific criteria: they must not only be famous role models for youth, but also stable and mature enough to tell their own stories of overcoming abuse or hardship. She has found that young South Africans respond immediately to hearing their heroes talk—and that the celebrities themselves become stronger advocates as they gain insight into their nation’s problems. The counselors teach celebrities how to talk with traumatized young people during a one-day session about the basics of rape and abuse intervention. There are currently twenty trained celebrities, each of whom will soon lead their own Open Disclosure Tour to regions across all of South Africa’s provinces.
An essential part of getting at the root of the problem during the Tour is targeting aggressors. By bringing in men to discuss the ways they have overcome their challenges despite their anger and fear, the tour reaches out to boys and young men who might otherwise become rapists. Male teachers and police officers participate in the discussions to show that the problem affects everybody; nobody can hide behind authority. There is also an actor on the tour who is a convicted rapist and underwent counseling. He served his jail term and is now on a television soap opera where he portrays a rapist. His commitment to end rape serves as a powerful role model to boys and young men.
Andile visited over 50 schools in the 2003 series of Open Disclosure Tours, reaching several hundred children per school. In 94 percent of schools, young people reported experiencing sexual abuse, and in one primary school 100 students said they had suffered sexual abuse. Some young people told counselors they had been undergoing abuse for years at home but had nowhere to turn for help. Since the basis for sexual abuse often originates in learned childhood perceptions of men and women’s relationships to power and aggression, the Open Disclosure Tour offers both solutions and preventative measures. Their messages about gender equality, open communication, forgiveness, healing, and overcoming devastating situations apply to both boys and girls.
Andile realized that she was opening up new channels for communication, but that the process would take longer and require more follow-up than her traveling team or the present state system could provide. This inspired her to launch the Open Disclosure Center in downtown Johannesburg, the first in a planned network of sexual abuse counseling centers throughout the country. Her board includes representatives from government agencies and mental health professionals, as well as development and fundraising  professionals.
At the Open Disclosure Center, counselors follow up by phone with the young people who gave sexual abuse testimony during the Open Disclosure Tours. The young people may visit the center, which is secluded at the top floor of a secure office building. There they receive not only therapy, but also massage work to release stress and regain their sense of physical safety. They are also eligible for “safe house” placement and job training.
To begin the legal process, Open Disclosure partners with legal advisors’ help from the Department of Public Safety. As the case proceeds, Open Disclosure updates the young people on its progress. Throughout the entire process, Open Disclosure keeps careful and confidential records of each young person. Current staff include Andile as executive director, a center manager, a staff clinical psychologist, a supervising counselor, and open disclosure tour personnel. The remaining counselors are graduate students from a Johannesburg university, selected for their maturity, youth, and energy.
The Department of Safety pays for the Open Disclosure Tours, including stipends for celebrities, and has committed to continue their support. Numerous projects are being planned to benefit the center financially and offer young people jobs: a sewing and fashion program, computer courses, and a coffee shop to serve the office block. For now, Open Disclosure’s main financial support comes from the Department of Social Services.
Andile plans to spread her program across the country by enlisting more celebrity teams, counseling staff, engaging with the Department of Public Safety, and setting up more Open Disclosure centers. The next round of tours will be more strategic geographically, scheduled around one-week tours in specific townships. At each week’s end, all the nearby schools will gather for a large concert and festival where parents can participate. Andile plans to build small Open Disclosure centers in school buildings and allocate funds toward starting a youth-oriented counseling and treatment program within local clinics.

When Andile was 11, her father raped her. The following year she was beaten and raped by a stranger on the way to school. She kept these incidents to herself until she was an adult, but they guided her calling to start the Open Disclosure program.
Born in Soweto, Andile is a singer and songwriter of Kwaito, a style of popular South African music. She’s been a celebrity in the music scene since her early 20s, releasing albums in South Africa and a single with BMG records. Her outgoing nature was a natural fit for developing friendships with musicians, performers, and football stars.
To diversify her professional profile and to increase the longevity of her career, Andile chose radio as her medium and trained at Yfm radio station in Johannesburg. Her interest in the nonprofit world led her to get Yfm to initiate a department called YCARES. She started her work heading the department without salary but quickly became so useful that Yfm hired her. As director, she has made extensive contacts in South Africa in the areas of HIV/AIDS, entrepreneurship, education, and sexual violence. In 2001, Andile was working at Yfm when she heard a young woman call in and threaten to commit suicide because she had been sexually abused. This incident was a catalyst for Andile to speak about her own abuse in the hopes of helping other young people seek treatment.
When she began talking publicly about her own history of childhood sexual abuse, Andile predicted some response from the public—but she did not realize the magnitude of the problem. Hundreds of calls flooded the radio station; half came from adults who wanted to volunteer or help, and half were young people who had been sexually abused. Andile consulted with experts in the field and arranged meetings with groups of the callers, thus beginning her successful Open Disclosure program.