Since the murder of Anene Booysen, I, and I suspect many others in the gender-based violence sector, have felt completely overwhelmed by the multitude of opinions and approaches to gender-based violence articulated in the sector, the media, and in public and private conversations throughout the country. At the research unit where I work there have […]
rape
Posted inGeneral
I am not wearing black today
By Lize Hartley Let me start by saying that wearing black today is an act with good intentions. It comes from a good place, and I am not pointing fingers at those who have chosen to wear black. But I won’t be wearing black today. To start with, wearing black is not “taking a stand” […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Rape, let’s end it
By Miranda Pyne Anene Booysen’s gruesome murder last week caused many of us to speculate about revenge. Yet again we sombrely witnessed another violation. Another woman’s life wasted. People online, and on the radio, called for castration, the death sentence, sentencing the murderers to life in the worst prison possible, in some overcrowded hellish place […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Activists do make a difference, Haffajee
There’s an old philosophical riddle that goes like this: If a tree falls in the forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Updated for a contemporary 21st century South Africa reeling from the rape-murder of Anene Booysen it might read like this: Does work exist if Ferial Haffajee […]
Posted inNews/Politics
From Slut Walk to One Billion Rising: Losing the protest plot
Following her wildly popular Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler, the American feminist playwright and activist, has a new campaign, a new activism, a new brand. One Billion Rising. The concept is simple. Motivated by the popular consensus, that one woman in three worldwide — that is one billion — experiences some form of violence in her […]
Posted inGeneral
#StopRape alone won’t stop rape
A significant component of the national outcry following the horrific gang rape and murder of 17-year-old Anene Booysen highlighted the extent to which South Africans shift blame and culpability on the raped, and not the rapist. This manifests itself through the lazy recourse in our national dialogue to primitive and antiquated explanations for rape: broken […]
Posted inNews/Politics
One Billion Rising — South Africa
(Scroll through to hear the voices of women as they call for an end to violence against the feminine.) “In my mind we need to transcend the Cartesian mind/body dualism and bring back the pantheistic experience of the body with its sexuality and intellect indivisibly united — in a celebration that dances wildly in the […]
Posted inGender violence
Never tired enough to stop
I am tired of rape in South Africa. I am tired of thinking about it, reading about it, hearing about it. I am tired of the fact that last year more than 60 000 women (enough to fill the Greenpoint Stadium) reported a rape to the police, and hundreds of thousands more women were raped but […]
Posted inGeneral
Raped, again
By Fezisa Mdibi Walking out of the filthy house I realised my eyes were swelling when the tears started stinging. My lip was bleeding and ribs were on fire. I was angry. I stopped crying. I had been raped for the second time in my life before my 16th birthday. At 15 I was raped […]
Posted inNews/Politics
India: Rape, uproar…silence
By Ashish Sewgoolam Sexual harassment is so much the norm in India that foreigners are warned by travel agents to travel in groups and with a male if possible to deter local men from making advances or lewd comments. I would usually brush this off as Western exaggeration but I’ve seen it happen live, and […]
Posted inGender violence, News/Politics
How many sexual offence cases go to trial?
The annual crime stats present us with figures of how many people reported their crimes in the previous year. These can be incredibly hard to comprehend. It’s hard for me to imagine what 100 people look like, never mind thousands of people. So trying to imagine the 64 514 people who reported a sexual offence between […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Secondary victimisation: Rape survivors denied emergency ARVs
The 2007 Sexual Offences Act (SOA) requires that certain services be made available to rape survivors. Among these services, survivors of oral, anal and vaginal rape are entitled to receive post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), a 28-day course of antiretrovirals for the prevention of HIV infection. This must be provided to survivors – at state expense – when […]