Siviwe Gwarube
We all expressed collective shock when a man lured three toddlers into his shack where he viciously raped, suffocated and strangled them in Diepsloot in 2013.
We were shaken to the core when a nine-year-old girl was brutally raped and set alight in Delft in 2014. A mere 24 months after Anene Booysen’s murder, another 14-year-old child was found raped, murdered and hidden underneath a bed in Bredasdorp last year.
Shameful acts like these have become a blemish that we have seemingly learnt to accept as part of our reality. The country’s leaders, opinion-makers and influencers of social discourse have all agreed that sexual violence has reached crisis levels in South Africa.
However, few succinctly dissect the cause or propose tangible strategies on how to cure the “disease”.
On commemorative days like Women’s Day or the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children, leaders from all walks of life occasion the period by making bold, sweeping, condemning statements about why rape is abhorrent and indefensible. Whether all this results in tangible change is up for debate.
What continues to be baffling is how conversations around rape are completely devoid of the connection between everyday sexism and misogyny to sexual violence.
Existing conversations seem fixated around how women must protect themselves against sexual violence, as though they are the perpetrators. Very little speaks to the role and responsibility of men in the fight against sexual violence.
The other day, I was working late when I bumped into a colleague in the elevator. We were walking to the same parking garage, but I opted to take a longer route. Puzzled, he asked me about my choice. This all may seem innocuous, but in that moment I realised something: men and women experience this country completely differently.
The truth is that I take the longer route daily because I know the alternative brings with it a group of men working on a construction site who will catcall me. As if I am not rattled enough, the security guard in the parking garage will comment about the length of my dress and the fact that I am a subject of his fantasies.
For them, this is all good sport in the name of harmless flirtation – part of how we have taught men, from a young age, to “appreciate” women.
For many women, even the place they call home, where they should feel secure, the odds are completely stacked against them. As a country, we must stop believing that a rape culture is perpetuated by those savages over there or by those people who end up being convicted for heinous crimes against women.
Your failure to act is an act itself, and serves to silence victimised women. When men are taught that women deserve respect, are of equal standing and do not exist as objects of your sexual pleasure, only then can we begin to dismantle the rape culture which has become normalised in our communities.
If you – yes, you – do not teach young boys to be feminists and to believe in the worthy cause of equal political, economic, cultural, personal and social rights for women, then you have done us all (men and women) a disservice. This is why comments like the ones made by President Jacob Zuma in Nkandla on Saturday are part of the problem.
The president allegedly said: “When men compliment you innocently, you say it’s harassment. You will miss out on good men and marriage.”
You see, like my colleague who didn’t understand why taking the longer route is best for sanity and a sense of safety, the president has no clue what it is like to be a woman in this country. He doesn’t have an inkling of how much of an insult it is to rape survivors to hear leaders condone such an atrocious treatment and view of women.
Until we accept that actions which may seem insignificant, and comments which may be regarded harmless all contribute to a rape culture in South Africa, we will continue to feign despair every time a woman or a child gets raped or killed.
l Gwarube is Head of the Western Cape department of health. She writes in her personal capacity.