March 8 is a day of solidarity between women. It is a day when women across our planet unite against misogyny — the unspoken hatred of the female. Misogyny manifests in the horror of infant rape, in the everyday humiliations experienced in sweatshops and offices, in streets and homes. It results in women and girls bearing the brunt of poverty, HIV/Aids and violence.
March 8 also provides an opportunity to celebrate and share the work women are doing in the institutions of politics, economics, education, religion, science and the media, in homes and communities. It provides a moment to re-inspire as we recognise the beauty and worth inherent in each of us, in all of us, in the face of often unspeakable horror.
In South Africa last week, events on International Women’s Day dramatically challenged us as a country to clarify the nature of leadership and power as well as their underlying values and principles. In our country, where violence against women and girls is widespread, a rape survivor used her democratic right to charge her alleged perpetrator, a very powerful man. For her courage she has paid a very high price. Her home has been burgled and ransacked twice, she and her mother have faced death threats, and she has lost her freedom as she has been forced to seek police protection. Under the protection of the state, her police ”minder” tried to ”persuade” her to drop the charge.
After the trial her future is reported as being ”uncertain”, as police protection ends ”as soon as the witness has served his or her purpose”.
Last week South Africa received an insight into her future as the supporters of the alleged perpetrator, wearing ”100% Zulu Boy” T-shirts, burnt her photocopied photograph with her name clearly displayed as they chanted ”burn the bitch”.
Our democracy upholds former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s right to a fair trial. Complainants in rape cases cannot be named, so men and women supporters in the One in Nine campaign have named her Khwezi, meaning star. Khwezi is one out of the one-in-nine women who are raped and report their rape. They report knowing that only 7% of rape cases that get to court lead to convictions. The women who do not report rape are terrified of the ”secondary rape” they may experience in the criminal justice system. They are also scared of the women who begrudge any woman who challenges the status quo. Scared of the women who chant ”burn the bitch” as vehemently as the men. The truth is that women, like men, often defend their patriarchs. The unknown is more fearful than the known, no matter how flawed.
Jacob Zuma’s defence reveals the extent of misogyny still prevalent within the legal system. A calm, quietly confident woman took the stand on Monday and was torn to shreds by the end of the week. She was ”systematically grilled”, her words stolen from her private manuscript.
Khwezi went for psychological treatment after her father’s death. As a child she was raped several times. According to Zuma’s lawyers, the African National Congress court classified it as ”sex with a child”.
”Sex with a child” is a tragic misnomer for what the ANC in government (as well as every other civilised society) denounces as statutory rape. Khwezi’s childhood rapes were used to build a picture of a promiscuous woman who cries rape after consensual sex.
The lawyer suggests that since Khwezi has been raped so many times she should have ”developed ways of resisting rape”.
He sniggers: ”… did she leave out shouting for help because it didn’t start with an ‘f’?” Zuma’s defence against the rape charge is that he had consensual sex without a condom. Zuma headed the Moral Regeneration Campaign and the South African Aids Council, whose message is ABC (Abstain, Be faithful and Condomise).
On radio stations and on the Friends of Zuma website Khwezi is mocked for saying that she ”froze”. Under cross-examination, she is asked who she has slept with, how many lovers has she had, who did she have penetrative sex with? … and oh my god, is she a lesbian! How much more titillating can it get?
In South Africa 2006, it feels as if The Sun newspaper is in charge of radio, television, newspapers and the website of the Friends of Zuma. A woman who has sex is a whore, a hoor, a prostitute — who, like wives, cannot be raped. They are objects owned by men, whose bodies do not belong to them. Khwezi is 31 years old. At 31 years few, except nuns, yogis celibate since childhood or the Virgin Mary, can claim to have no sexual history. The message being conveyed is that if any woman or child decides to lay a charge of rape, this is how she will be crucified.
In this same week, the grand-daughter of the judge who had issued the search warrants in the arms-deal corruption case against Jacob Zuma was murdered by thugs who gang-raped the childminder. When the child’s body was found she was half-naked. This is misogyny … a war against those who are female. Every woman I spoke to expressed horror at what was happening. Every woman asked the same question: ”What can we do?” Misogyny and patriarchy, like all forms of authoritarianism, aim to render us powerless.
This rape case reflects what happens and has been happening for decades, in most rape cases, across the world — from South Africa to the United States. What is different is that it occurs in the full glare of public opinion. The experience of women and girls, who are raped, was brought into the court through the testimony of Merle Friedman, a clinical psychologist. Through the horror something powerful is beginning to emerge — a spirit of solidarity with each other and with the woman who is being burnt at a modern-day stake to which we are all witness..
As South African citizens, we are not powerless and we must assert our power with love and courage. South African women are expressing the resolve with which our grandmothers marched: ”You have struck a woman, you have struck a rock” — and men of principle are standing with their daughters, their sisters, their partners and their comrades.
We can use our power to entrench women’s rights in the Constitution and in our legislative framework through the necessary change in sharing power, resources, responsibilities and rights. We can ensure that Parliament enacts the Sexual Offences Bill to protect the rights and dignity of complainants — as feminist activists, politicians and lawyers have been arguing for. The childhood rapes of another Khwezi must become inadmissible and cases such as this must be heard in camera, so that lawyers cannot again turn rape into a pornographic feeding frenzy.
In a society where most girls’ first sexual experience is one of coercion, rape is confused with sex. We can use this moment to clarify the distinction between sex and rape — rape is the abuse of power, in which the penis, instead of creating mutual pleasure, is used, among other things, as a weapon of war. We can clarify and change the power inequalities and definitions of masculinity that increase levels of HIV infection. We can affirm that women and children are not objects to be owned and disposed of as men please.
Last week women celebrated many achievements — the large numbers of women elected into power in South Africa in the local government elections; a socialist/feminist president in Chile; the first woman president in Africa, who in her inauguration speech had broken an ancient taboo to speak about the threat of rape against herself.
Their election shows that women and men can break out of the patriarchal mindset that insists that leaders be men who wield the power of money or guns. It shows that leaders can be chosen on the basis of values and principles which prioritise the interests of those who are without power. In South Africa this moment can enable us to clarify not just what it is we are opposed to but what it is we stand for.