"Corrective rape" increasing in South Africa

[ccharles000]

The Guardian and others have been reporting on the growing trend in South Africa where lesbians are raped and beaten in efforts to "correct" or "cure" their sexual orientation. And the authorities are not doing much about it.

After Eudy Simelane, the leading player on the Banyana Banyana national female soccer team was brutally raped and murdered last April, more awareness has been raised, but the prevalence of this horrific trend has only grown with it. One lesbian and gay support group in Cape Town says they get 10 new cases of "corrective rape" every week. And that's just in Cape Town.

And many of these cases result in murder, but with a barely existent conviction rate; there has only been one conviction out of 31 reported cases in the last decade. (The number of actual incidences are predicted to be much higher.)

In response, ActionAid and others have released a report, Hate Crimes: the rise of corrective rape in South Africa, bringing to light the prevalence of the "practice" as well as the failure of the South African legal system to take recourse; hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation is not recognized under South African law. On sentencing of Simelan's case, the judge said that her orientation had "no significance" in the murder.

Check out The Guardian's video of interviews with some survivors. (Trigger warning.)

http://www.feministing.com/archives/014230.html

[snappyturtle]

1. What a sick practice! nt

[Radical Activist]

2. I'm sure nothing makes a woman like men

like getting raped. jesusfuckingcrhist! :argh:

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. My sentiments exactly

[woo me with science]

3. Horrific. Thank you for posting this. nt

[Barack_America]

4. Sounds not unlike the "corrective beatings" black South Africans faced during Apartheid.

Where whites attempted to beat the "savagery" out of their fellow black citizens.

I don't recall the government doing much about that either.

What makes this story all the more tragic is that South Africa is a country that should know better about compassion, tolerance and learning to live with those who are not like yourself.

[ccharles000]

8. I agree

[HamdenRice]

11. Oh, please. What bullshit. They're not at all alike.

The government itself beat and killed activists during the apartheid era, and the law also authorized white farmers to beat black farm workers.

South Africa now has a state of the art constitution with expansive human rights, and the Constitutional Court was one of the first in the world to recognize GLBT marriage equality.

These are vigilante killings by poor, uneducated thugs, not legalized beatings that are part of a national legal scheme to oppress any group. If there are no convictions, it's because, sadly, there are few convictions for murders of any kind in South Africa because the police are so under-resourced.

The courageous woman who was killed was not only a famous athlete, but an openly lesbian spokesperson, and she is one of many openly GLBT South Africans campaigning for the full realization of Constitutional rights in the country. Despite the horrific dangers they face (and that claimed her), they are making GLBT "normal" in that country to the overwhelming majority of the middle class, working class, elites, and the very large progressive movement in general.

The fact that advocates for human rights and GLBT rights are able to call attention to this problem, produce reports and lobby the policy and politicians shows how different these problems are. That would not have been allowed during the apartheid years.

So here's the simple big picture: During the apartheid years, the government was on the side of the oppressors; now, as bad as this crime was, the government is on the side of the oppressed GLBT community.

Moreover, before criticizing South Africa, you might want to compare their political system to ours. We just experienced 8 years of a lawless, murderous, illegal war mongering, unconstitutional administration, during which the opposition party ruled impeachment off the table.

By contrast, South Africa just a few months ago tossed out its president, President Mbeki, before his term ended -- something we miserably failed to do -- because of his unconstitutional interference with the legal system, his political paranoia and his failure to respond to the AIDS crisis, and his own party, the African National Congress led the charge to get rid of him.

Did either the Republicans or Democrats do anything like that to Bush?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

5. the justice system in South Africa is useless in sex crimes

To begin with the number of sex crimes actually reported is very low, since sexual issues are so taboo among the afrikaners and in many black areas there is no functioning law enforcement to report such a crime to and on top of that even if a sex crime does go to trial you still have a bunch of white judges who are indifferent to black/colored on black/colored crime and black judges who are alarmingly receptive to the "short skirt defense".

[Odin2005]

7. Words fail me...

:puke:

[Nikki Stone1]

9. I wish we wouldn't use the rapists' terms. It's an attempt to annihilate difference and a life.

"Corrective" is just perpetrating the evil spin.

[Kievan Rus]

10. There's been a rape epidemic in that country for quite some time

[Captain Hilts]

12. And in several other African countries. nt