South African singer and ex-MP Jennifer Ferguson has accused the country’s football boss Danny Jordaan, 66, of raping her nearly 24 years ago, BBC News reports. He “overpowered” her and “painfully” raped her in a hotel in Port Elizabeth city, she has alleged in a blog.
Jordaan, who organised the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Now living in Sweden, Ferguson said she had been moved by the #MeToocampaign on social media to speak out.
She said the attack took place when she was “high and happy” following her unexpected nomination by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress party to serve in South Africa’s first democratically elected parliament in 1994.
Jordaan, a prominent member of the ANC and president of the South African Football Association, came to her hotel suite after she had given a performance at a dinner.
“He overpowered me and painfully raped me. It must have been over in about 20 seconds although it felt like a lifetime,” she alleged.
“He left immediately without saying a word.”
She wants rape survivors to “begin to heal”
Ferguson said she had been “bewildered” and in a state of “complete shock”.
“Not sure what to do, I washed and left the hotel and began to walk. I reached the beach and sat there a very long time trying to process what had happened,” she said.
“The thought of going to the police felt intolerable. What would I say? Should I have screamed louder? Fought him off harder? Had I been complicit in some way? All these questions raged in my mind. I wept.”
