/ 5 May 1999

AFRICA NOT FOR WOMEN

MORE than 5000 women are brutalised in Africa every day, according to leading African human rights activist Mary Okumu of the Nairobi-based Africa el Taller. The most common forms of violence include wife battering, sexual harassment, forced marriage, rape and female genital mutilation. In South Africa, one in every three women are battered by their husbands or partners, according to the country’s Commission on Gender Equality. Here, of an annual 32000 rapes and physical assaults on women, only one in 36 cases is reported; of these, less than a third are prosecuted, and only half result in convictions.