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Lesbian South Africans are living in fear as rape and murder become a daily threat in the townships they call home.
Noxolo Nkosana, 23, is the latest victim of a series of violent attacks against lesbians.
She was stabbed a stone's throw from her home in Crossroads township, Cape Town, as she returned from work one evening with her girlfriend.
The two men - one of whom lives in her community - started yelling insults.
"They were walking behind us. They just started swearing at me screaming: 'Hey you lesbian, you tomboy, we'll show you,'" Ms Nkosana tells the BBC.
Before she knew it a sharp knife had entered her back - two fast jabs, then she was on the ground. Half conscious, she felt the knife sink into her skin twice more.
"I was sure that they were going to kill me," she says.
Many lesbians have died in such attacks - 31 in the last 10 years, it is reported.
In April, Noxolo Nogwaza was raped by eight men and murdered in KwaThema township near Johannesburg.
The 24-year-old's face and head were disfigured by stoning, and she was stabbed several times with broken glass.
The attack on her is thought to have begun as a case of what is known as "corrective rape", in which men rape lesbians in what they see as an attempt to "correct" their sexual orientation.
The practice appears to be on the increase in South Africa.
More than 10 lesbians per week are raped or gang-raped in Cape Town alone, according to Luleki Sizwe, a charity which helps women who have been raped in the Western Cape.
Many of the cases are not reported because the victims are afraid that the police will laugh at them, or that their attackers will come after them, says Ndumie Funda, founder of Luleki Sizwe.
"Many of them just suffer in silence," she says.
"The cases people read about in the media are not even the tip of the iceberg. Lesbians are under attack in South Africa's townships every day."
Reports of police ridiculing rape victims abound in the gay community.
"Some policemen in the township mock you saying: 'How can you be raped by a man if you are not attracted to them?' They ask you to explain how the rape felt. It is humiliating," says Thando Sibiya, a lesbian from Soweto.
She says she knows two people who reported rapes but then dropped their cases because of their treatment by the police.