YouTube rape videos, castrating taxi drivers and a woman named Gugu

A 25-year-old mother of two from south London whose drink had been spiked was raped by three boys who filmed the incident on a cellphone and then uploaded it on to YouTube. The website, immediately after being informed of this, pulled it off but not before about 600 people had already seen it.

Unfortunately in a situation like this , like any other disgusting conduct that draws attention, copycats are bound to follow. Worse, now that people know that the video exists, the interest in seeing it will inevitably ensure its reappearance on the internet.

How low can we go? Much lower, I’m afraid. Any moron with a cellphone has become an amateur film director and the subject matter is anything from university initiations to gang rape.

Snuff films, if they aren’t already here, will soon be making an appearance.

While regulation of the internet is definitely not within my field of expertise, I would be very interested in hearing your views on what is being done (if anything) and whether anything can be done, as well as any suggestions you may have.

South Africa, as we all know, has some of the worst — if not the worst — rape statistics in the world. Just looking back to an article by (our) Charlene Smith in 2004, we get some indication of how bad things are.

The situation today is just as bad, if not worse.

This will not improve any time soon when South Africa vetoes United Nations resolutions on rape because of factors primarily based in expedience and point scoring. All that does is to send the worst possible message to people who don’t understand the niceties of politics.

And if the government is missing the boat there, it is way off base in not clamping down hard on taxi drivers who believe that they can get away with outrageous conduct based on the fact that women are wearing miniskirts. Taxi drivers are already a law unto themselves on the road — soft-soaping them on this issue will occasion tragedy sooner rather than later.

We cannot even begin to condone this type of conduct; next I’ll be told that a woman was deservedly raped because she was wearing a miniskirt.

Mondli Makhanya was right in his Sunday Times column — we need to start setting standards now.

At present we have our women on the march and demanding that these guys be castrated. If that is how they behave, is anyone surprised?

And it doesn’t stop there — a reader named Gugu has told me that her niece was raped by a foreigner who was working in South Africa illegally. The police were advised accordingly as was the prosecutor; despite this, the accused is out on bail.

I have been trying to raise the control prosecutor without success. The merits of the case and identity of the accused can’t be discussed here as the matter is sub judice. This does not detract from the fact that our criminal justice system does not do itself any favours in granting bail in so many rape and murder cases. The test for the accused is to demonstrate “exceptional circumstances” justifying his or her being granted bail.

Unfortunately Gugu’s niece’s case is all too common.

While we can’t stop the internet, the conduct of men towards women in this country needs to be addressed. Rape must be slammed and legislated against in the strongest possible terms by the government; the criminal justice system needs to be ruthless in dealing with these culprits — be it rape, assault or any other unacceptable behaviour; and a standard code of conduct needs to be introduced to the people of this country.

If women calling for men to be castrated and taxi drivers assaulting women for wearing miniskirts, in a country with our rape statistics, does not light up every warning light on the dashboard, nothing will.