Taboos on discussing sexual abuse combined with party loyalties to shroud in secrecy gender-based violence during the African National Congress’s exile years. But Jacob Zuma’s rape trial lifted the lid on the subject recently when Zuma’s accuser said she had been raped on three occasions while in exile.
”Sexual violence during the apartheid period, both inside and outside the country, was the untold story,” said Yasmin Sooka, director of the European Union Foundation for Human Rights. ”It’s very clear that we need some more work on this … Perhaps the time has come to talk about this.”
Last Thursday, the court heard that Zuma’s accuser had been raped while in exile with the ANC in Swaziland. Reportedly, an ANC court convicted the two men of sex with a minor, but not rape, and gave them the minimum sentence.
In a 1996 submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), SheilaMeintjies and Beth Goldblatt wrote of women’s reluctance to discuss gender-based violence that may have occurred during the ANC’s period of exile from the 1960s to 1980s.
One interviewee said that women might not have wanted to disclose abuse because it is a difficult matter for survivors to discuss and because, in the context of the TRC, doing so might appear to equate the ANC’s actions with those of the apartheid state.
”Unfortunately this kind of problem is a very difficult one,” Joe Modise, the former national minister of defence told the TRC in 1997. ”It is the kind of problem that manifests itself in places such as camps, very far from home, isolated, in hostile areas, and the difficulty of young men going out into town.
”There was also information to the effect that some of the camp commanders took advantage of their positions and started asking or pressuring some of the young ladies to do them favours.”
In acknowledging the existence of sexual crimes in the ANC, academics have stressed that the extent of the problem should not be exaggerated.
”This is clearly an issue that the organisation has to deal with, but so does society as a whole,” says Wits University academic Shireen Hassim.
Women who were in exile communities told the Mail & Guardian that the high male to female ratios led to considerable sexual pressure on women, but they recall relatively few instances of women being raped.
”We used to be in the camps and we would be told that men do not have a right to violate us,” said Lita Mazibuko, a survivor of rape in exile, during the 1997 TRC hearing. Gertrude Shope testified that the ANC Women’s League had visited camps to work with women and command structures to solve gender-related problems.
”These are issues that the Women’s [League] raised and tried to deal with in exile,” said Hassim. ”It was discussed internally but they never found a mechanism to deal with it adequately.”
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the ANC leadership appointed committees to resolve members’ complaints, said an ANC member who spent time in exile and asked to remain anonymous.
The ANC’s stance on rape was reinforced when it declared adherence to the Geneva Convention of 1949. Article 27 of the Convention states that, ”Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault.”
After a 1984 commission of enquiry into Angolan camps, the ANC adopted a code of conduct at the 1985 Kabwe Conference.
”Sexually assaulting or in any other way seriously offending the dignity of members” as well as ”abusing office by using one’s position to obtain material or sexual or other undue advantage from members or others” are considered to be ”serious offences” under the code.
Sexual offences would be tried by regional disciplinary committees and punishments for serious offences might consist of the deprivation of liberty for a maximum of five years, recommendation of expulsion, suspension, public reprimand, assignment of tasks, forfeiture of privileges, demotion and redeployment.
Zola Skweyiya, then a high-ranking official in the ANC’s legal department, reportedly spearheaded open trials in cases between ANC members in the late 1980s to ensure due process was observed, said a former member of the ANC security branch who asked not to be named.