Any excuse for a jol and a South African will be there. Women’s Day is following suit. There were fashion shows, concerts, club nights with female DJs, you name it. Soon we will have kitsch cards, balloons and discounts for restaurant chains.
That’s fine — it means the day is being institutionalised. But what we should not forget is that the day is one on which to mark progress on the woman’s road to equality and freedom. Equality is not a paper concept, though laws are important. Getting there means the hard graft of implementing laws and providing skills and services, so that livelihoods are improved and glass ceilings shattered.
Freedom is literally the freedom to wear what one wants, to walk (or drive) where one wants, to associate with or dissociate from whomever one pleases. It is in this crucial sphere that South African women remain most unliberated.
Mamphela Ramphele has called our rates of abuse and rape a “national crisis”, adding that violence against women has reached higher levels than she has ever witnessed. This is a woman who has lived through South Africa’s darkest hours. Surely such a crisis requires a state of emergency? The laws and policies to fight abuse are in place, but they fail in the implementation. They are subverted by simple shortcomings like police who respond too late or do not respond at all because abuse is a domestic affair; prosecutors who cannot put together watertight cases; and families who continue to stigmatise those who speak out about rape and abuse.
We know the demon, but seem to lack the energy to fight it head on. This is a campaign which must not be directed at the state alone, but also at the domestic environment, where most abuse takes place. If women secure economic equality and opportunity they will be better equipped to make their homes the sanctuaries they should be.
It is a long walk, but we should not lament that there is “no cause to celebrate”, as some in civil society have done. Of course South African women have reason to celebrate. But we are not passive victims who should patiently await the delivery of equality and freedom.
Imagine if the marchers of 50 years ago had adopted such a view. We might still be waiting. It is every person’s right to jol; and everybody’s duty to battle the demons we must still slay.
Cardinal sin
It is an obvious truth that paedophile priests are not confined to the Catholic Church. But it is equally obvious from the Mail & Guardian‘s information that the Catholic Church in South Africa has a significant problem in this explosive area — and that is failing to confront it.
Whether the perverse policy of priestly celibacy is a factor is a moot point. What is clear is that paedophiles are drawn to hierarchical institutions in which adults enjoy unusual power over children — reformatories, boarding schools, orphanages and the church. It is in these, typically, that abuse occurs. What makes such abuse particularly heinous is that it involves the exploitation of society’s most vulnerable. Because children are ignorant of their rights or afraid to speak up, it sometimes continues unpunished for years.
For this reason, it is imperative that priestly sex crimes are treated with the utmost seriousness when they surface. Yet the first impulse of the Catholic hierarchy seems to be to shield members of the priesthood and protect the church’s reputation. How else is one to understand Cardinal Wilfred Napier’s statement, in a letter, that it is “not in the interests of Catholics” for allegations to be made public? Why did he tell complainants that they were wrong to record and circulate a priest’s confession? Is he seriously suggesting that the media are fanning the embers of a non-existent problem? His cold and legalistic offer of psychological therapy to a victim, on condition that she sign away further claims against the church, strongly suggests a desire to shut her up.
But it is the Catholic Church’s response as an institution that is the real worry. Victims complain bitterly that it shows no interest in how they or their families are coping. They dismiss the “protocol” committees set up to investigate abuse as mere platforms for priests to protest their innocence. It is a scandal that a priest charged in court with repeated abuse was earlier cleared by a committee which, without expert knowledge, dismissed his accuser as schizophrenic.
It is evasive and self-defensive behaviour that really damages the church. More than any other institution one would expect the church to understand that honesty is the best policy — and the need for a vigorous response to victims’ demands for justice.