16 Days of Activism: Every 26 seconds a woman gets raped, it was my turn last Thursday night
If there is one thing that all South Africans should be ashamed of, it’s our nation’s sexual crimes statistics. They are beyond shocking. Let’s all celebrate 16 days of activism against rape in South Africa.
The following article by Charlene Smith really, really got to me. Charlene is a very brave woman.
Every 26 seconds in South Africa a woman gets raped, it was my turn last Thursday night. Before I began writing this I took AZT, 3TC and Crixivan — they are anti-retroviral drugs, they will hopefully help lessen the potential of me getting Aids from the rapist, assuming of course, that he is HIV positive. In a country where 1 800 people contract HIV every day, it’s a gamble I refuse to take. But the difficulties I encountered in getting the drug and the treatment I received from medical staff at private hospitals and the district-surgeon’s office are an indictment against healthcare policies and the medical profession. I need to take these drugs for a month, within two weeks they will be making me feel very ill and depressed. The therapy will cost me about R4 000. I am a freelance journalist with medical aid for hospitalisation only, and not this. With the three anti-retroviral drugs I am on antibiotics in case the rapist had a sexually transmittable disease aside from HIV/Aids. The district surgeon a quiet Congolese who admitted she has to go for therapy because she cannot cope with what she sees, also gave me “morning after” tablets because I was raped while I was ovulating. She gave me yet another 12 drugs I had to take simultaneously, I don’t know what they were for. I need drugs to sleep and tranquillisers for those times when I become very fearful or tearful.
For the rest of the blog piece visit Charlene’s blog, here.
It’s astonishing to me just how bad the situation is. One has to wonder how it got to such epidemic proportions. Was it like this all along? Is the culture to blame? Or is it an expression of deep-seated anger and frustration brought on by poverty, disenfranchisement, and lack of protections for women?
BTW… you will want to update your blogroll to reflect that I’ve moved to WordPress.com (http://thinkinguhuru.wordpress.com) instead of thinkinguhuru.blogspot.com
I suppose it was like this all along, we’ve had soaring rape rates in SA since the 90s. I suppose prior to that the Apartheid government never really cared about rape in black communities, therefore it wasn’t such a big thing. But it was, and it still is.
As Charlene Smith says in her article, her rapist was an educated, middle-class man. She also goes on to say: ‘… I want you to know that rape is not about race, as some South Africans think. It is not about what men do. It is only about what a few sick individuals do, it has nothing to do with race or male-hood.’
South Africa has a problem. The rape rate is so high not only because of socio-economic problems, but also because of an inefficient police force and forensic backlogs. Cases go missing at courts, and we have a notoriously low prosecution rate in South Africa. Only when we fix the courts, police and forensic services will my country reduce rape rates and prevent future sexual abuses against women and children in South Africa.
Well, it is also a myth that ONLY women get raped. Grown men have been raped in SA too; but obviously rape affects women the most. I heard of a man who some middle-aged women picked up on the side of the road, then forced him into their car at gunpoint for sex. They raped this young guy (and others) to give him HIV. Not because of sexual lust, power or a hatred of men. They raped these men simply because they wanted to infect them with HIV. But this was an isolated incident. Men are by far more likely to be raping women, than the other way round. Obviously.