Asking for a Chance to Live

Charlene Smith is small but tough and as persistent as a dripping tap. As a white, liberal South African journalist, she has had her share of harassment, of dodging bullets and tear-gas in black townships and of witnessing some of the worst abuses of apartheid. So when Johannes Thembekile Zinto broke into Smith's suburban Johannesburg house on the night of April 1, 1999 and raped her at knifepoint, he made the biggest mistake of his life. A year later Zinto was sentenced to 30 years jail and Smith had become not a victim but an unrelenting crusader against sexual violence and...