The rape epidemic

by Editor · July 30, 2014

The systematic rape of women and children has always been a weapon of war, and this remains unchanged. Innumerable accounts from survivors of mass rape exist, even from recent conflicts.

Women, many of them victims of sexual violence, listen to a talk at Panzi hospital in Bukavu, South Kivu province, in eastern Congo, in this 2007 file photo. Systematic rape in Congo has been called a “weapon of war,” but after the latest hostilities ended in 2003, sexual violence continued to be a daily reality for Congolese women. (CNS photo/Reuters/Newscom)

For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo more than 400 000 women were raped in a 12-month period between 2006-07.

And it is not just the domain of those whose methods reasonable people would deem barbaric. In July, Israeli Middle East scholar Dr Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University suggested that Palestinians would be deterred from carrying out acts of violence only by the threat that their wives and daughters would be raped in retribution � an incitement to sexual violence that does not require an official military order.

The idea of mass rape as a strategy in war and the image of rapists targeting random women for attack tend to distort the understanding of what constitutes rape.

To be clear: any form of sexual congress which is not mutually consensual is a rape.

The increasing numbers of reports, in South Africa and elsewhere, of rapes being filmed on cellphones by witnesses � not in order to collect evidence for the eventual prosecution of sexual offenders, but to be disseminated for lurid entertainment � points to a trivialisation of sexual violence in society.

The easy access to pornography has served to denigrate society�s understanding of the sex act. While most studies don�t conclude that the consumption of pornography leads directly to acts of rape, porn�s devaluation of sexuality, and its objectification of women, may well have informed the values held by those who participate in the sexual subjugation of women.

Sexual violence disempowers women in many ways. When men believe that women have no control over their sexuality and refuse to admit such control, there is the ever-present potential for rape.

Many victims of rape are randomly attacked: by the sexual deviant on the prowl in the proverbial dark alleys, by police in situations where women have no recourse to the law, by civilians in the case of refugees and so on.

Most women, however, are raped by people they know, and often the attacker is the husband. Typically neither attacker nor victim acknowledge this as rape, even if the wife explicitly withheld her consent.

Through the generations women have been conditioned to submit to their husbands sexually, either by the notion that sexual availability is her conjugal duty, or by the experience of violence as an introduction to sexuality. According to the�UNAIDS Gap Report, which was released in mid-July, up to 45% of adolescent girls in Africa report that their first sexual experience was forced.

While sexual assault rarely receives good press, it remains rampant. In South Africa a woman can expect to be subjected to sexual assault almost every half-minute.

Experts point to various constituents to account for that endless rape epidemic: a patriarchal society in which women, even if protected by civil law, are commonly prevented from exercising their rights, especially in terms of their sexual autonomy; a culture of violence in which aggression is displaced and directed at weaker members of society; and a system of law enforcement and justice which fails to punish rapists for their crimes, with the consequence that few of the cases actually reported result in a conviction.

Deplorably, a significant number of South Africans routinely trivialise sexual assault. Some believe that a victim �enjoys� the assault; others blame her for attracting rape by the clothes she wears, which was an argument forwarded by the president of the country, Jacob Zuma, in his defence during his 2006 rape trial (he was acquitted).

And not a few South Africans believe it justifiable that lesbians should be raped to �correct� their sexual orientation.

We can express our outrage, light candles and click on Facebook petitions. These are creditable gestures, but they simply are not enough. South Africans must rise up by becoming engaged in or giving support to groups that address the incidence of rape and advocate the empowerment of women.

And we must forthrightly demand action from government, law enforcement and the judiciary, lest they too be held accountable for their complicity by omission in the rape of South Africa.