In last week’s edition of this newspaper was told the appalling story of a primary-school child who had been raped by one of her teachers [Falling through the cracks]. The principal of the school was well aware of what had been taking place on his patch: no less than five reports of sexual interference with pupils by this particular teacher had been reported to him — reports he chose to ignore. He still holds his job and any attempt to fire him will be regarded by the authorities as a violation of his rights.
Recently, when asked in Parliament what was being
done about the problem of the outrageous and increasing rate of sexual assault of pupils in schools, that champion of “conceptualisation” and “stream- lining”, the ever artful ministerial dodger, Kader Asmal, reassured everyone that a strategy to counteract this crisis was in the process of being devised.
In the Sunday Times of last weekend was reported the horror story of a two-year-old girl who literally had been raped and sodomised to death, then left to be forgotten in a mortuary because a policeman decided that there had been no sexual interference. The child had been all but torn open. Police then took five months to collect the postmortem results. The rapist remains unidentified and free.
Last weekend also saw the broadcast of a BBC World television documentary in which the terrible story of Baby Tshepang was retold in detail. Unlike any of the local television programmes, which sedulously avoided making this central disclosure, this uncompromising documentary by Clifford Bestel explained that when the six-month-old infant was admitted to hospital after being raped, it was still against government policy to treat her with anti-retroviral drugs, so as to reduce her chances of contracting HIV from her as yet unidentified assailant. In effect her appalling violation would have been amplified as a direct penalty of the government policy but for a doctor who, in defiance of the inhuman edict, gave Baby Tshepang the medication. Shortly afterwards the doctor was sacked by the provincial Department of Health for disobedience.
Do we have to think any further than the daily news of yet more sexual violence perpetrated on the defenceless? In the community from which Baby Tshepang came, the rape victims range in age from six months to 101 years.
There has to be some reason for what the BBC documentary described as a South African moral fabric that is shredding. No doubt that suggestion will prompt the now standard South African response of excusing any trespass, large or small, in this country on the grounds that “it happens everywhere else in the world”.
It does, but the signal difference is that nearly “everywhere else” violent sexual crime is not running rampant. It does not occur hundreds of times a day. In such offences South Africa puts “everywhere else” in the shade. One rural Limpopo hospital recorded treating the victims of no less than 786 rape and sexual offences in the past year. Of these 287 were children under the age of 10. These figures represent 15% of the estimated actual rate.
For South Africa there are no caveats. Ours is a developed and functioning country. So far our government has not rendered the national fiscus bankrupt — given that with a tad more time, there’s little doubt its ebullient political venalities will bleed us dry. Our government’s predilection for exorbitant arms deals, the hosting of cornucopian international conferences, lavish inauguration ceremonies, luxurious private airliners, the support and succour of neighbouring despots, the hosting of endless and fruitless peace conference junkets and all the spendthrift rest of it, is of record.
For its sovereign failures in moral and practical leadership the South African government stands accused and must accept its fair share of the blame for a preposterous level of violent crime — particularly against women and children. The police force is severely underfunded, often grossly overstressed. To call the justice and prison systems disasters is to compliment them. And what dubious moral epitome is submitted with the presidential pardon of a whole parade of violent criminals?
We may only hope that it is no more than extremely bad timing that prompted the president’s first and seemingly dismissive response to the recent exposure of violent crime against women and children. This past Monday Thabo Mbeki popped up on national television encouraging the South African citizenry to sign some “international pledge” and thereby promise to behave better towards women and children in the future. This, coincidentally, on the day after a young British female tourist had been captured and gang-raped by four brutes for 14 hours.
South Africa’s respect for human and all other life has diminished to an all-time low. Things are far past desperation stage and, apart from the monotonous discharge of weary platitudes by those in power, there is virtually no help from the top. Our country is critically disabled by crime, in need of determined, of concentrated therapy for its formidable domestic afflictions, and far less time, energy and money spent on grandiose continental overviews and strategies.
Bill Mbeki, won’t you please come home.
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby