South Africa’s former deputy president, Jacob Zuma, has been on trial for rape and this is not about him. It is about what has been called “the culture of rape” that pervades much of South African society – and by that I mean black South African society. There are whites who commit rape as well, of course, but the sheer scale of the abomination amongst blacks boggles the mind.
As the woman Jacob Zuma is accused of raping prepared to testify in court, Zuma’s supporters outside the court yelled, “Burn the Bitch!” Thus, even before the court has found Zuma either innocent or guilty, his supporters have decided that he is innocent and she should be burned to death. This is the kind of mentality that prevails. The mob calls for a hideous death sentence for the woman accusing him: mob justice, death by burning. Welcome to South Africa, 2006. You are forgiven for thinking this is somewhere in darkest Africa in the eighteenth century or earlier. And the ANC has the cheek to tell us that this is a “democracy”, where the rule of law prevails!
Last year alone, 55000 rapes were reported in South Africa! SA has probably the world’s highest rate of rape. And yet it is believed that only one in nine women report the crime to the police. This means that the actual figure is something like 450 000 rapes a year, in a country with a population of around 45 million! And yet it is hardly surprising that so few rapes are reported, when women see the attitude to rape displayed outside the court where Zuma is on trial!
A chilling aspect to all this is the fact that, when the ANC leaders were living outside the country and planning and conducting terror activities against SA from outside its borders, they established military training camps in various neighbouring countries; and for years, there have been allegations that women in these ANC camps were regularly sexually abused, and abused in other ways. These allegations have continued to be made, and now the opposition Democratic Alliance’s Women’s Network has called on the ANC to conduct an urgent and thorough probe into these allegations, saying they can no longer be ignored. Janet Semple, the DA Women’s Network leader, said that reports on such abuses should be made public, and appropriate action taken against the perpetrators. She said that allegations of violence against women in the camps have been simmering for many years, and have now burst into the open through evidence being led in the Jacob Zuma rape trial. The woman Zuma is accused of raping has referred in court to three earlier rapes while she was a child living outside SA, in the ANC camps. And other women have now come forward with similar allegations.
One source, very close to the ANC’s exiled community, said: “There were many reports of ill treatment and abuse of women in various parts of the exile movement in Angola, Zambia and Tanzania. The abuse was widespread. It was sexual and [included] other abuse. Women who were abused – and there were many of them – did not speak out. Some have positions in the state and the army and they might feel it would jeopardise their positions.... women were used and abused because they were women, by men at all levels” (Weekend Witness, March 18, 2006).
Another source, closely involved with the ANC exile community in Harare, Zimbabwe, and with senior members of that community, described many abuses of women. “In Lusaka, they used to kill you if they wanted your wife. That was the level of violence.” The source continued: “There were other instances where the men wanted to sleep with other men’s wives. But some of the wives refused. They were labelled agents of the Boers [SA’s white Afrikaners].” And: “After 1976, many young people left South Africa. They were promised scholarships. Many people could not get these unless they slept with senior people from the ANC.”
The ANC says that such claims were investigated internally at the time, by itself; but it appears the perpetrators were only lightly reprimanded (The Witness, March 27, 2006). For example, Jacob Zuma’s accuser gave details of how she was raped when she was five, 13 and 14. The court heard how an ANC “court in exile” (nothing but an informal set-up in which the local leadership would assemble a group of people to hear the case and decide on the punishment) docked six months’ pay off two men who sexually abused her, not because the ANC “court” found she had been raped, but because she was a child. The ANC “court” concluded that she had agreed to sex (Weekend Witness, March 18, 2006).
It is excellent that the DA has decided to make a noise about these allegations and put pressure on the ANC to investigate, because this highlights the kind of “morality” the ANC has always subscribed to, and the world needs to know it. But we do not for a moment hold out any hope that any good will come of it. It is unlikely that the ANC would ever agree to conduct such a probe, but even if it did, it is quite obvious that: a)it would see to it that those conducting the probe were sympathetic to the ANC, if not outright ANC supporters; and b)the only people who would ever be likely to be charged would be low-ranking ANC members. It is unthinkable that top ANC leaders would be hauled before those conducting the probe. And yet it would be very surprising if the abuses that occurred in the ANC camps were limited to the rank and file. In his book, Mbokodo: Inside MK, Mwezi Twala describes the shocking treatment of people, including horrific rapes, tortures and murders, in the ANC camps. The men who led the ANC during its years when it conducted terrorist actions from outside SA were brutal, dangerous men (Mbokodo: Inside MK, by Mwezi Twala and Ed Benard, Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 1994).
So we should not be surprised at the “culture of rape” that now exists in South Africa. The people who now govern this country come from an organisation that turned a blind eye to the abuse of its own supporters in its camps. Is it any wonder that hundreds of thousands of rapes occur every year? SA is governed by gangsters, many of them guilty of the very crimes they now so self-righteously condemn, as they call for the “moral regeneration” of society – a once-moral society which they played such a part in turning into one of the most immoral on earth.
As the woman Jacob Zuma is accused of raping prepared to testify in court, Zuma’s supporters outside the court yelled, “Burn the Bitch!” Thus, even before the court has found Zuma either innocent or guilty, his supporters have decided that he is innocent and she should be burned to death. This is the kind of mentality that prevails. The mob calls for a hideous death sentence for the woman accusing him: mob justice, death by burning. Welcome to South Africa, 2006. You are forgiven for thinking this is somewhere in darkest Africa in the eighteenth century or earlier. And the ANC has the cheek to tell us that this is a “democracy”, where the rule of law prevails!
Last year alone, 55000 rapes were reported in South Africa! SA has probably the world’s highest rate of rape. And yet it is believed that only one in nine women report the crime to the police. This means that the actual figure is something like 450 000 rapes a year, in a country with a population of around 45 million! And yet it is hardly surprising that so few rapes are reported, when women see the attitude to rape displayed outside the court where Zuma is on trial!
A chilling aspect to all this is the fact that, when the ANC leaders were living outside the country and planning and conducting terror activities against SA from outside its borders, they established military training camps in various neighbouring countries; and for years, there have been allegations that women in these ANC camps were regularly sexually abused, and abused in other ways. These allegations have continued to be made, and now the opposition Democratic Alliance’s Women’s Network has called on the ANC to conduct an urgent and thorough probe into these allegations, saying they can no longer be ignored. Janet Semple, the DA Women’s Network leader, said that reports on such abuses should be made public, and appropriate action taken against the perpetrators. She said that allegations of violence against women in the camps have been simmering for many years, and have now burst into the open through evidence being led in the Jacob Zuma rape trial. The woman Zuma is accused of raping has referred in court to three earlier rapes while she was a child living outside SA, in the ANC camps. And other women have now come forward with similar allegations.
One source, very close to the ANC’s exiled community, said: “There were many reports of ill treatment and abuse of women in various parts of the exile movement in Angola, Zambia and Tanzania. The abuse was widespread. It was sexual and [included] other abuse. Women who were abused – and there were many of them – did not speak out. Some have positions in the state and the army and they might feel it would jeopardise their positions.... women were used and abused because they were women, by men at all levels” (Weekend Witness, March 18, 2006).
Another source, closely involved with the ANC exile community in Harare, Zimbabwe, and with senior members of that community, described many abuses of women. “In Lusaka, they used to kill you if they wanted your wife. That was the level of violence.” The source continued: “There were other instances where the men wanted to sleep with other men’s wives. But some of the wives refused. They were labelled agents of the Boers [SA’s white Afrikaners].” And: “After 1976, many young people left South Africa. They were promised scholarships. Many people could not get these unless they slept with senior people from the ANC.”
The ANC says that such claims were investigated internally at the time, by itself; but it appears the perpetrators were only lightly reprimanded (The Witness, March 27, 2006). For example, Jacob Zuma’s accuser gave details of how she was raped when she was five, 13 and 14. The court heard how an ANC “court in exile” (nothing but an informal set-up in which the local leadership would assemble a group of people to hear the case and decide on the punishment) docked six months’ pay off two men who sexually abused her, not because the ANC “court” found she had been raped, but because she was a child. The ANC “court” concluded that she had agreed to sex (Weekend Witness, March 18, 2006).
It is excellent that the DA has decided to make a noise about these allegations and put pressure on the ANC to investigate, because this highlights the kind of “morality” the ANC has always subscribed to, and the world needs to know it. But we do not for a moment hold out any hope that any good will come of it. It is unlikely that the ANC would ever agree to conduct such a probe, but even if it did, it is quite obvious that: a)it would see to it that those conducting the probe were sympathetic to the ANC, if not outright ANC supporters; and b)the only people who would ever be likely to be charged would be low-ranking ANC members. It is unthinkable that top ANC leaders would be hauled before those conducting the probe. And yet it would be very surprising if the abuses that occurred in the ANC camps were limited to the rank and file. In his book, Mbokodo: Inside MK, Mwezi Twala describes the shocking treatment of people, including horrific rapes, tortures and murders, in the ANC camps. The men who led the ANC during its years when it conducted terrorist actions from outside SA were brutal, dangerous men (Mbokodo: Inside MK, by Mwezi Twala and Ed Benard, Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 1994).
So we should not be surprised at the “culture of rape” that now exists in South Africa. The people who now govern this country come from an organisation that turned a blind eye to the abuse of its own supporters in its camps. Is it any wonder that hundreds of thousands of rapes occur every year? SA is governed by gangsters, many of them guilty of the very crimes they now so self-righteously condemn, as they call for the “moral regeneration” of society – a once-moral society which they played such a part in turning into one of the most immoral on earth.
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