A magistrate went beyond rhetoric in sentencing a rapist, writes journalist Charlene Smith
The worst thing a criminal does is remove the dignity and humanity of those he seeks to victimise. The criminal justice system is worthless unless it restores that to the survivor of violent crime.
It took a magistrate in one of the busiest, ugliest, least prestigious courts in the land to remind his fellows on the Bench of that.
Magistrate Johan Pretorius in his judgment of Johannes Zinto, the man who raped me at knifepoint in my home on April 1 last year, took a few rape myths and turned them on their head. I am incredulous that he gave the rapist 15 years for stealing a few household items and the same amount of years for raping me – our society is on its knees because we place more value on material goods than on humanity – but I believe he delivered some important messages.
The victimisation of those raped comes not from the blade of a rapist, or the coldness of a gun barrel. It comes from families and friends who do not hear; it comes from police officers who do not act; and from some arrogant prosecutors who treat us like dirt. It comes from so- called experts who pontificate on rape without consulting rape survivors.
Confronting rape is to acknowledge that HIV/Aids is rampant in Africa not just through sexual promiscuity. Aids is storming across the continent because of despicable attitudes and practices toward women and children – and rape leads the field.
There is a direct correlation between HIV and rape. The rape graph in South Africa surges upward at age 11; it peaks between ages 13 to 25. The highest incidence of HIV is in girls aged 15 to 25.
The Department of Health announced a fortnight ago that 20% of girls aged 13 to 19 are HIV-positive. The World Bank says six times more girl children than boys in Africa are HIV-positive.
Some researchers say the high incidence of HIV in teenage girls is because of the sugar daddy syndrome. If that were true we would not have laws against paedophiles. One of the fastest accelerating areas of rape in South Africa is by men who rape children – virgins – because they wrongly believe they will be cured of HIV, and yet there are no campaigns to dissuade them of the wrongness of this belief.
The elimination of Aids will not happen through condoms and vaccines. It has everything to do with the attitudes of the men and boys who rape; who believe they can have sex with anyone they want, whether it is a woman walking in the street, their non-consenting wife or their daughter – and of those in the private and public sector who retreat from anything that has the word “rape” appended to it.
The effective fight against sexual violence will lead to better medical treatment not only for women and children raped, but for all survivors of violent crime. Most rapists are involved in other crimes, from drugs to hijackings to housebreaking – if you catch a rapist you solve more than one crime. Why then is rape a high priority crime in words only and not resources?
Pretorius, however, went beyond rhetoric and into the bedroom of a woman raped. When police took my statement after the crime they told me it was a great shame I had not fought, “because he would have beaten you and we could have had photographs of bruises and injuries to show the judge or magistrate. Without it, he will say it was consensual sex.”
Pretorius noted that the attacker would have probably harmed or killed me if I had fought. By remaining calm, he said, I was able to observe enough to give a clear identification of the rapist.
And so, hopefully, we put paid to those who ask a woman why she did not fight. No one says to a person hijacked – an event that may take three minutes: “Why did you give him your keys? Why didn’t you fight for the gun?” Insurance companies do not see a failure to fight as the willing donation of the family car.
A person in a bank during a robbery is counselled to obey the robbers. A bank robbery lasts maybe 15 minutes. No one says to a person caught in a bank robbery: “Why did you go to a bank? You know banks get robbed.” But for women raped – and the average rape takes three to four hours of beatings, abuse, tying up and the rape itself – we endure family and friends asking: “Why did you walk down that road? Why did you wear that dress? Why did you speak to that person?” And so, those upon whom we depend the most – those we love – cause many women to retreat into silence.
Pretorius commented that our home, which should be our sanctuary, was now our prison.
And in an important part of his judgment, he recognised that a rape is not a statistic about an event on a particular day; it has profound psychological consequences. “The complainant became obsessed by survival. She suffered financially but the psychological effect was the most important. The fear of HIV was intense and to get psychological help or anti- retrovial drugs to prevent HIV costs a lot of money. The court has not heard that government is giving these drugs to help people raped.”
He talked of the incredible fear of contracting HIV as a result of rape.
How lucky I am as a survivor of violent crime to be heard.
Too many South Africans only gripe among friends. We do not lay charges; we do not fight for justice. And if we do not, we will not receive it.
But we cannot just blame. We need to look at solutions too. In the end, it is our choice, to be a victim or a survivor. We choose to have a society free from crime – or a society filled with crime where we only whinge, but do not fight for our rights to be recognised.
A day short of a year ago the Mail & Guardian published an article detailing a rape on me in my home a week before. It took me four days to write the article. It caused me to vomit and weep. The police warned me against having it published for fear that it would enrage the rapist. I briefly withdrew it and then thought: “If I begin running from the rapist now, I will never stop.” Speaking out has empowered me in more ways than I could have ever imagined.
And what made the worst of all years not only bearable but triumphant was the fact that so many people heard. Everyone who read that article could have shaken their heads, bemoaned the sorry state of crime in South Africa and turned the page. Many responded to my words: “I believe all of this happened for a purpose. God sent me this challenge. I have to turn this evil into good and that too is why I am speaking out. Rape victims are not statistics, we are people; this is our story. We have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a so-called moral society that does nothing that should be filled with shame.”
It has been an extraordinary year. My phone never stops ringing, my e-mail intray is always full. Many people find their way to my door. I am contacted by governments on three continents, by rape survivors, pharmaceutical companies, insurance houses, hospitals, psychiatric institutions, prosecutors, lawyers, human rights organisations from all over the world, women’s groups, men’s groups, justice departments on two continents, media from six continents. I get asked about HIV/Aids, antiretrovirals, rape in its various forms, domestic violence, forensic science, medical care, drugs, laws here and elsewhere, cultural traditions here and elsewhere, counselling techniques, how to help families or people in need. Until now I have done it all for free.
The war against HIV/Aids and sexual violence presents the government and the private sector with a magnificent opportunity to develop cutting-edge solutions that the rest of the world can learn from. Our problems are huge – which means our solutions can be dramatic.
We have to look at new ways, not tired, imported concepts. I sometimes wonder if part of the shame of rape does not come from those with a vested interest in us keeping quiet about our trauma. There is a whole range of organisations and experts on rape who speak for the rape survivor and say we are too ashamed to be publicly identified and to speak out. But it is only by breaking the silence that we break the stranglehold of the rapist.
Among the hundreds of rape survivors I deal with, few have benefited much from either counselling or NGOs. When I say this publicly I am “cautioned” by fretful psychologists and NGOs, afraid I will damage the donor money they receive.
But why should psychologists and NGOs not be held up to public scrutiny? I know of rape organisations that do not return crisis calls, that speak to traumatised women with disrespect, that inflate their successes. An Alexandra rape survivor who is now HIV-positive after a gang rape was asked by a counsellor, “How did they get your legs open?”
The sordidness of the mind of the rapist has no bounds, nor does the power of a rape survivor to heal once she has made that choice. Without the hundreds of men, women and children who have entrusted their stories of profound suffering and triumph to me, I would be nothing more than a hollow shell through which the wind whistled.