Eudy Simelane, was a star of Banyana Banyana, national female football squad from South Africa.
When she became a fierce equality rights leader and living as a out lesbian, was found in a creek in Kwa Thema, gang-raped, badly beaten and stabbed 25 times.
After that incident, a wave of violence against lesbians in South Africa grew. These violent acts are called "corrective rape" committed by men trying to "cure" lesbians of their sexual orientation.
A report by the international NGO ActionAid and the South African Human Rights Commission, found that the attacks are going unnoticed by the state and the legal system.
It's sad to think that these crimes are not being taken seriously.
The Guardian asks the community what's going on?
"Every day I am told that they are going to kill me, that they are going to rape me and after they rape me I'll become a girl," said Zakhe Sowello from Soweto, Johannesburg. "When you are raped you have a lot of evidence on your body. But when we try and report these crimes nothing happens, and then you see the boys who raped you walking free on the street.""What we're seeing is a spike in the numbers of women coming to us having been raped and who have been told throughout the attack that being a lesbian was to blame for what was happening to them," said Vanessa Ludwig, the chief executive at Triangle.
"When asking why lesbian women are being targeted you have to look at why all women are being raped and murdered in such high numbers in South Africa," said Carrie Shelver, of women's rights group Powa, a South African NGO. "So you have to look at the increasingly macho culture, which seeks to oppress women and sees them as merely sexual beings. So when there is a lesbian woman she is an absolute affront to this kind of masculinity."
A statement released by South Africa's national prosecuting authority said: "While hate crimes – especially of a sexual nature – are rife, it is not something that the South African government has prioritised as a specific project."
The failure of police to follow up eyewitness statements and continue their investigation into another brutal double rape and murder of lesbian couple Sizakele Sigasa and Salome Massooa in July 2007 has led to the formation of the 07-07-07 campaign, a coalition of human rights and equality groups calling for justice for women targeted in these attacks.
Sigasa and Massooa were tortured, gang raped and shot near their homes in Meadowland, Soweto in July 2007, shortly after being verbally abused outside a bar.
Human rights and equality campaigners are hoping that the public outrage and disgust at Simelane's death and the July trial of the three men accused of her rape and murder will help put an end to the spiralling violence increasingly faced by lesbian women across South Africa.
This isn't right and I can't believe it's getting this bad and going unnoticed
