Ferial Haffajee
At least eight women will have been raped by the time you read to the end of this page.
Three years into the new democracy and a woman is still raped every 36 seconds in South Africa, perhaps even more frequently if the growing numbers of reported rapes indicate an increase in the incidence. About six in 10 women will be battered by their partners at some time in their lives.
It’s a situation which many believe needs the services of a Bud White. He’s the hero of the movie LA Confidential, who believes in fists first as he knuckles down on Hollywood toughs who beat their women, reducing them to grovelling lumps.
This weekend, though, it’s the soft option on display in Pretoria when “Real men march against women and child abuse”, as the posters say. The men’s march builds on a similar community protest in Gauteng earlier this year and the black American “million man march” of two years ago. It’s been a long time since struggle-weary activists have evolved a mass campaign with cachet, but this one has caught the popular imagination.
Everybody’s pitched in: all tiers of government, most non-governmental organisations and every commission around from the Commission for Gender Equality to the Human Rights Commission have given financial and human-resource help.
The SABC has provided free airtime and the agency Young & Rubicam has provided a free TV ad, all of which has added to the hype.
“Our constitutional breakthroughs and Bafana Bafana’s sports victories are quite bankrupt if we’re also the champions of rape,” says Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of the South African NGO Coalition, which organised the march. “We have to get men to acknowledge they have a problem and to work together to address it.”
The problem could paradoxically be getting better and worse, says Sally Shackleton of People Opposing Women Abuse (Powa). Between January and June this year, 24 805 women reported that they had been raped though the real figure is probably closer to 496 100 rapes because only one in 20 reports the crime. That’s a 30% jump on the rapes reported in 1994. Growing confidence in the police could mean that more women are reporting rape, but Powa also believes the incidence of rape and battery is growing.
“Very few men can get up and say `I’ve never been abusive,'” says Naidoo.
That’s why he believes the march will not be like preaching to the converted, although many women joke that Pretoria’s the place to be on Saturday for finding sensitive new-age men. “It’s not a march of PC [politically correct] men,” counters Naidoo.
But in a macho society, men are not easily drawn together to acknowledge a problem. Last week, Naidoo was heartened when a hip youngster saw his car (with the coalition’s logo on it) at a stop street. “You’re the ouens organising that men’s march,” he shouted. Naidoo beamed, happy that the message was reaching the rank and file. But instead the young man added: “You all are a lot of moffies.”
Sex workers and Aids counsellors report distressing attitudes to rape and battery among young men. Roger from Thoko Thaba High School in Thokoza says: “In the African way a women must be beaten to make her stronger,” while his friend Vusi adds: “Sometimes a little beating helps … if you don’t beat her you don’t love her.” Amos feels that “if your father beat your mother, you’ll beat your girlfriend when she does something wrong”.
At the organisation Adapt in Alexandra, Gauteng, young men are learning something different. A group of them meet every Thursday to talk about their problems. The moffie allegation is one they have heard too, but for Boitsepo Lesetedi it’s been worth the ragging. He admits “using my small hand” many times on his girlfriend. He doesn’t any longer.
“I’ve become aware of my aggressive and abusive tendencies,” he says, adding “… 99.9% of perpetrators are men and we need to be part of the solution.”
In Durban and in Cape Town, women’s organisations are also finally drafting men into their work. And at 22 service centres around the country, National Institute for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of Offenders members now teach men’s groups the simple problem-solving and communication skills which could begin to topple South Africa from the ladder it now sits atop as Interpol’s world number one rape capital.
Additional reporting by Maria McCloy