A Nation's Shame

"It is estimated that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read.  [In] a survey conducted among 1,500 schoolchildren in the Soweto township, a quarter of all the boys interviewed said that 'jackrolling', a term for gang rape, was fun."

 South Africa is an African elder-statesman nation.  It has tried to become a template for other African countries, to emerge into a more advanced social, political state, one where the spectre of apartheid can be forgotten as a human evil impressed upon the country by a malign occupying white demographic that enslaved the black South Africans. 

But while it has made great efforts to raise itself to a position of civil society the fundamental issues revolving around extreme poverty persist.

And so does the level of crime that plague the country.  South Africa is considered to be one of the most violent countries in the world.  Certainly when it comes to the welfare of women it is horribly violent.  Rape is a way of life in South Africa; women and girls are unsafe at any time from the rapacious habits of their men who simply view women as their entitled playgrounds.

Over 56,000 rapes were reported to police in the last year, in South Africa.  Yet a study concluded in 2009 by the government's Medical Research Council revealed that only one in 25 rape cases were reported to police.  According to the same survey over a quarter of South African men admit to having raped a woman or girl. 

The self-serving myth that sex with a virgin child could cure AIDs was no help to women and girls.

Nor was the fact that the man who is now president of the country, Jacob Zuma, raped a young woman, a long-time family friend who trusted him and looked upon him as an 'uncle'.  She was infected with HIV/AIDs, a condition he was aware of.  He testified later, at trial, that he had taken precautions, having showered afterward.  The rape charge, of which he was later acquitted, did not turn the vote against him.

A 17-year-old girl from Soweto who, it is reported, has the mental capacity of a four-year-old was recently gang-raped, videoed and the results seen countless times.  She had been missing, but her mother hadn't bothered reporting her missing as she had often wandered off for days at a time.  Charges of child neglect are being considered for the girl's mother.

Seven men, age 14 to 20, identified through the video, have been arrested to be kept in custody until a hearing.  Additional charges have been considered for a 37-year-old man in whose company the police found the girl.  "This episode must force us to take a serious look at ourselves and ask: How did we get here?  How did we, as a people, raise monsters who find a joke in this repugnant act", read an editorial in The Star.

It speaks of a video ten minutes in length, where the girl is heard screaming and begging for those attacking her to stop as each took their turn raping her. 

One of them offered her two rands to stop crying.