Please stop.

On Wednesday the #rapevideo went viral in South Africa. Why? A 17-year old girl ( it has not been confirmed if she is mentally ill or not) was raped in a field by seven men aged between 14 and 20. The girl had been missing since the 21 of March.

Several aspects here are disturbing and all the news reports don'r provide the same information:

 -  why did the mother not report her daughter missing?
       - the CNN report states that she did, but that the police did not open up a missing person's report. Why??

 - what does it matter if she is mentally ill or not? Does it make her more of a victim? Or less?


The girl was found only after students at school showed each other the video on their cellphones and a mother discovered her daughter watching it. Instead of going to the police, the mother took the story to the Daily Mail, a tabloid with the highest amount of readers, who then alerted the police. Why would she not go to the police herself?

This whole story is horrible and highlights not only a corrupt system, but a break with morality in society. Where are the father's of these boys? Have they not taught their children to have any respect for women? And the children at school watching the girl being raped, or the requests on Twitter for the link to the video? How come no one spoke up? What does it say about us as people when we can watch a girl getting raped for 10 minutes, when we can hear her pleading for them to stop? How could the young men even think of such a thing? And laugh at her, egging each other on, ignoring how they are hurting her?

I just do not understand it. People are weak and have lost all sense of what is right and wrong. Many South Africans pride themselves on their Christianity, but to me, a non-believer, it seems that they see it as going to church on a Sunday to socialise and not actually to stick to the 10 commandments.

This rape just shows that there is a blackness at the centre of our country that is sucking the youth in and they are not being taught by their parents, their families, their friends, or anyone in their lives, what is good, what is pure and true.

Look, I sound like some moralising bitch sitting on a high horse because I am "safe" behind my white skin and my black gates and walls and alarm systems. But the fact is, a woman gets raped every 26 seconds in South Africa, and only about 10% gets reported because the women feel ashamed of something they had no control over. And it's not even just women. Men get raped, too, but the shame is even bigger, even more engrossing, because "a man cannot be harmed".

What bullshit. When they broke in, they told me they would not rape me. At that moment, I thought "Duh. I am certain you won't. No one would. One does not harm others".

But now, after this report of 14-year-olds involved ( yes yes, peer pressure and all that, but you make your own choices), I don't know. As I said, there is a black hole of immorality that keeps expanding exponentially and I think that as a society, one must make a conscious choice to somehow teach what is good again.

There are basic things one accepts, a basic code to live by, but somehow, here, the respect for individual life has been lost, and if that is gone, what remains?


Read this M&G editorial.
  

"Entitled" to rape

In last Monday's Pretoria News ( their site is currently under construction so I can't give you the direct link to the article, but if you have October 24th's paper by any chance it is on page 5 under "Study finds motive for rape worldwide") Esther Lewis reports that in South Africa, 70 % of men who have raped someone felt "entitled" to do so.

How does anyone feel entitled to harm another? ENTITLED???? How must your mind work? How can you not respect another human being enough?

Even worse, the research ( done by the Sexual Violence Research Initiative) revealed that most rapes of girls under the age of 15 and gang rapes are done out of boredom and "for fun". Raping for fun? For fun??????

The article further states that 17 % of the men that rape were raped themselves, that 45 % said their mothers were rarely at home and that 72% said their fathers weren't at home very often either. Furthermore, 3/4 of those interviewed said they had raped someone before their 20th birthday.

I was watching Special Assignment or Fokus or something on SABC once and they reported that 50% of South African children grow up without their fathers. Now I wonder if this can link to the 56 272 people that were raped between April 2010 and March 2011. That would be round 154 people per day and 6 people per hour.

The article states that boys "need to be socialised at school and community level, and taught what it meant to be a boy or man, and to gravitate away from violence". But should not a parent, a father, take responsibility for their son or daughter and teach them right from wrong? I think the high level of single-mother households and absentee fathers is partially to blame. Who are we to learn a moral code from when there is no one to teach us?

Perhaps it also depends on the level of education and the support from people around one that the child receives. My father left when I was around 11 and my mother had to find a job very quickly. However, my sister and I turned out rather well because we always knew that she was working so much to provide for us and that in turn our responsibility was to work hard at our education. One need not be rich to feel accomplished in life.

According to the article, most rapists had been exposed to childhood trauma. Does trauma define a person? Does it either bury you or make you rise above it? I don't know. Mine was not very traumatic.
But I believe there must exist a basic humanity in all of us. There must be something pure that is corrupted by circumstance. I don't understand how we cannot see each other as equal. By respecting you am I not also respecting myself?

I don't think one can blame anyone for one's own choices. I am excluding mental instabilities and psychotic problems here, but in the case of people of sound mind and body everyone is responsible for their own actions. Sure, life beats some up more than others, but ultimately, you choose your own reaction.

Rape

          Adrienne Rich

There is a cop who is both prowler and father:
he comes from your block, grew up with your brothers,
had certain ideals.
You hardly know him in his boots and silver badge,
on horseback, one hand touching his gun.

You hardly know him but you have to get to know him:
he has access to machinery that could kill you.
He and his stallion clop like warlords among the trash,
his ideals stand in the air, a frozen cloud
from between his unsmiling lips.

And so, when the time comes, you have to turn to him,
the maniac's sperm still greasing your thighs,
your mind whirling like crazy. You have to confess
to him, you are guilty of the crime
of having been forced.

And you see his blue eyes, the blue eyes of all the family
whom you used to know, grow narrow and glisten,
his hand types out the details
and he wants them all
but the hysteria in your voice pleases him best.

You hardly know him but now he thinks he knows you:
he has taken down your worst moment
on a machine and filed it in a file.
He knows, or thinks he knows, how much you imagined;
he knows, or thinks he knows, what you secretly wanted.

He has access to machinery that could get you put away;
and if, in the sickening light of the precinct,
and if, in the sickening light of the precinct,
your details sound like a portrait of your confessor,
will you swallow, will you deny them, will you lie your way home?