Marianne Merten looks at the many reasons why males turn to a life of rape and murder
The gang rape and murder of Valencia
Farmer (14) shocked many ordinary South Africans. But within days there were whispers in her community that she had been in a shebeen before she was attacked – tantamount to saying ”she asked for it”.
Three members of the Naughty Boys gang in Eersterivier, north of Cape Town, appeared in court in connection with gang-raping the teenager, stabbing her 42 times and slitting her throat. One of them, a 16- year-old boy, had previously been accused of murder but released owing to a lack of evidence.
Valencia was raped in an abandoned house used as a gang stronghold, which residents have since torn down, acknowledging that they ignored women’s screams coming from there for far too long.
Valencia’s death – hours after the brave girl managed to whisper the names of some of her attackers – has brought to the fore attitudes about women, sex and power. Experts agree that in the broken homes of the Cape Flats poverty, unemployment, substance abuse and the pervasive gang culture are key factors. Ineffective policing, delayed court proceedings and the scarcity of sexual abuse courts compound the problem.
Social attitudes are already at work undermining the horror of Valencia’s gang rape and murder. The rumours that she was in a local shebeen, where youngsters play pool and listen to music as adults drink, shortly before her ordeal, make many believe her rape and murder was a ”lesser crime”.
Public opinion finds it easier to deal with Alison (she does not use her surname) who recovered from a similar ordeal on a dusty road near Port Elizabeth five years ago to become a motivational speaker with a book on the best-seller list. For many Alison’s rape – what police referred to for many years as a ”real rape” by strangers in an isolated spot – fits better into perceptions of what rape is.
South Africa has the highest incident of rape in the world. The Western Cape and Gauteng vie for top spot in the country. Rape Crisis estimates a million South African women are raped each year. A study under way at Cape Town’s Salt River morgue shows that of every 1 000 women raped, 17 are murdered. And the figures appear to be going up.
Cape Town Rape Crisis director Carol Bower says as awful as last weekend was, it is not unusual.
”There is a high level of tolerance in all our communities. Although everyone gets fussy when something gruesome happens, in general the attitudes that prevail are attitudes that women are under obligation to do what they are told and they deserve what they get,” Bower says.
She says recent research among young men about their attitudes towards women showed frightening trends. Most youngsters know of violent relationships, often approve of them and believe men are dominant in relationships so that ”if his woman doesn’t pull the line, she deserves to be disciplined”.
Valencia became the second Cape Town girl whose rape and murder hit the headlines this week. The body of Veronique Maans (6) was discovered in a shallow grave in Tafelsig in Mitchells Plain almost two weeks after she disappeared.
Veronique was running from a fight and gunshots which erupted near a birthday party she was attending. She was raped, suffocated and partially buried face down in sand a few metres from her home in Freedom Park squatter camp. Her parents reported her disappearance to the police, who failed to conduct a search. Veronique’s body was found by children playing in the bushes.
Also in the headlines: last weekend, the naked body of a young woman was found squeezed into a drainage pipe in the Cape Town CBD. In Heideveld on the Cape Flats a 15-year-old girl was raped repeatedly at knifepoint. An evening on the scenic look-out point of Signal Hill ended in the gang rape of a teenaged girl and the shooting of her and her boyfriend. In the Kraaifontein area, where Valencia lived, at least seven girls were raped.
Chair of the Western Cape Anti-Crime Forum Gaynor Wasser says there is a conspiracy of silence around rape and violence against women and children. ”Every time things like this happen it is women’s organisations that must come up and speak out. Shouldn’t men be looking in the mirrors and asking ‘Why are we raping?’ and should men not come out against it?”
Power and control are relevant factors in rape, especially when people who believe they have no control over their lives choose someone more vulnerable to attack.
Rape Crisis believes gang rape and murder help young men rise from the junior to the top echelons of Cape Flats gangs. Says Bower: ”We have known for a very long time that part of initiation is gang rape, even if this evidence will not stand up in court. The gangs on the Cape Flats are incredibly powerful.”
Bower says it is critical to start changing attitudes among young people. Attitudes towards woman and girls – often as little more than ”receptacles for sperm” – will take a long time to change.
She acknowledges that socio- economic factors play a role in violence against women, particularly in the Western Cape where gang violence is a major problem, but it is not the single factor.
Bower says recent messages sent from the judicial system is that rapists, despite minimum sentencing stipulations, are likely to get away with it. She says it is ironic that after years of lobbying for proper legislation, minimum sentences and bail requirements the laws are not being used.
Wasser agrees. For more than nine years the forum has spoken out against gang rape and the role of gangsters in violence against women. Three years ago it raised the issue with police Provincial Commissioner Leon Wessels. She says nothing has happened.
”I believe the police failed communities in terms of acting against and arresting gangsters. They are aware of [gang- controlled] prostitution, where girls aged 11 or 12 are lured to shebeens. The same applies to the ‘taxi queens’ [girls who have sex with drivers in return for clothes, cash and jewellery. Nothing was done,” Wasser says.
Instead police are trying to broker peace agreements between rival gangs, thus allowing them to continue their criminal activities, says Wasser. For too long gangs have abducted or drafted young girls into prostitution by offering them clothes, drugs and jewellery. In many Cape Flats communities, gang bosses who own shebeens are known to offer what for many of families seems to be a large amount of cash for teenage girls to strip or attend ”parties”.
”If you want to point a finger, point a finger at everyone,” Wasser says. ”The bottom line: we are living in a male-dominated society. There needs to be gender equality. You hear people speak about it but you don’t see it.”
While there is consensus that many men on the Cape Flats are decent, honest and working to support their families, a scary new trend is emerging: young men are becoming more and more violent.
Anglican priest Reverend Matt Essau from Portlands in Mitchells Plain, who conducted the funeral service for Chantine Veldsman (3) who was gunned down three weeks ago, blames the living conditions on the Cape Flats on apartheid and the continuing neglect by authorities. Youngsters drop out of school as parents are away from home for long hours as work is often far away.
”By the time they get home the kids have been alone all day. By the time they realise there’s something wrong, it’s too late,” Essau says.
He says as a priest he is often frustrated. The church does not offer jobs nor can it run the urgently needed after-school programmes to keep children out of trouble – often all it takes is for a young person to remain idle at home before the spiral of joining a gang, dealing drugs and robberies starts. Little has been forthcoming from the government to, for example, ensure safety at schools, he says.
Social workers have long been concerned about the lack of positive male role models for young men. Many grow up having difficult relationships with their fathers, who frequently are drunk, in jail or otherwise uninvolved in their sons’ lives.
Gang researcher Don Pinnock says in these circumstances gangs seem to offer stability, some sort of security and prestige. An interpretation of the traditional rites of passage ceremonies seem to give order to often chaotic young lives. Whereas the killing of a rival gangster used to be the norm to gain entry into a gang, violence has refocused on gang rape and murder.
”It is now getting out of hand. It is a sick way of showing you are a man. And you need to be a man to join a gang,” Pinnock says.
Pinnock says perceptions about what it means to be a man are warped by television and movies portraying violence as acceptable and girls as alluring and at the disposal of men. ”They [boys] have no model of how to be a man. They think men are violent, they carry guns and they fuck and these are the things we have to do as men. It is horrific,” he says.
Pinnock says that in the short term there is a need to involve older people who are respected in the community as mediators to prevent this cycle of kids spinning out of control. He says people live in fear that if their teenagers do not join the gangs, they will be raped or killed.
While there is a swell of action at grassroots level from vigils and community meetings in Hanover Park to a neighbourhood watch in Mitchells Plain, which has promised to find Veronique’s killer, and the tearing down of the ”gang-rape house” where Valencia was attacked, levels of frustration with lack of action from authorities are increasing.
Essau says during a recent Sunday communion session, children told him about the bombing of a Dixie Boys gang stronghold in retaliation to one or other attack. ”When they tell the police of these things they get harassed by the criminals. And we say speak. They are so frightened.”
The Western Cape Department of Safety and Security, the police, business and tourism leaders gathered on Tuesday to discuss increasing security around scenic viewpoints like Signal Hill overlooking the CBD – the spot of several recent attacks. Police patrols have already been stepped up in that area. Yet there are still no plans to help distraught communities on the Cape Flats.
n Peter Dickson reports that a seven-year- old girl was snatched from her school in East London two weeks ago, and viciously raped and assaulted.
The girl, from the Nompumelelo informal settlement yard, spent four days in Frere hospital having her genitals, which were torn in the attack, treated.
Her school reported the snatching soon after it happened, but police said they had no transport to come and assist. Frustrated residents marched on the Beacon Bay police station when the girl was readmitted to hospital for a second stay after she began bleeding again.
The rapist (22) was arrested by police on the Sunday after the attack, but was back on the school playing field on Tuesday, his case dismissed owing to lack of evidence on Monday. The victim’s mother said she had taken care to keep her daughter unwashed to preserve crucial DNA evidence. But the investigating officer was booked off sick and therefore no evidence was presented.
Hours before the chilling assault, Sinempulelo Public School principal Nokuzola Ndabambi and her sister stopped the rapist attempting to drag another young pupil into the bushes. It was the fourth time he had done so.
Ndabambi phoned the Eastern Cape police, among the most demoralised, overstretched, under-resourced and under-budgeted in South Africa, but they never arrived.
Last Wednesday night, Ndabambi, who said there would be no school until the thug was behind bars, joined 60 locals in an angry march on the police station where mob justice was promised if he was seen in the community ever again.
Police found the rapist again last Friday. He was charged again and will appear in court ”soon”.