\u201cThe rates in South Africa are so significant. There is so much rape. The figures show the incident of rape is declining, and that\u2019s not true. What\u2019s happening is that women are giving up on talking,\u201d Smith said during a Skype interview last month.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Women\u2019s groups in South Africa estimate that a woman is raped every 26 seconds and over 40 percent of South African women will be raped in their lifetime, according to human-rights organizations.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you\u2019ll find in South Africa is that rape is very violent,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWomen go to the police stations to try and report and they\u2019re often laughed at. There have been instances of women being raped by the officers they\u2019re trying to report to. So women are just really giving up.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah McLaughlin, a communications coordinator at Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust, has been working with rape and sexual assault survivors for decades. The epidemic of rape in South Africa is damaging the country in profound and, possibly permanent ways, according to McLaughlin.<\/p>\n \u201cSexual violence places a massive burden on our economy,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cThe effects of rape are so devastating, and the high number of women who are raped in South Africa means that a large portion of our population is dealing with psychological trauma, physical illness, substance abuse \u2013 which often means they are unable to work, or even provide proper care for their children. Rape erodes the social fabric of our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n Paula Fray, the first female news editor of The Star<\/em> newspaper in South Africa, said that there is an air of indifference when covering or discussing the high rates of rape.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the big issues about South Africa is that, because gender based violence is so pervasive, very often it doesn\u2019t make the news unless it is very dramatic. Unless the woman is gang raped, or the woman is raped and assaulted and mutilated. What we\u2019ve done is, we\u2019ve normalized rape,\u201d Fray said.<\/p>\n Scholars suggest that a host of factors contribute to the high instances of rape in South Africa. Some of those factors include poverty, lack of education and substance abuse. However, one of the most pressing is patriarchal traditions. A culture influenced by misogyny and lack of opportunity for women is one of the biggest motivators for rape, according to McLaughlin.<\/p>\n \u201cThe prevailing patriarchal ideologies that exist in South Africa that maintain the oppression of women and give rape and ownership of women\u2019s bodies legitimacy,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cMany of South Africa\u2019s traditional practices contribute to this, for example the Xhosa tradition of paying \u2018lebola\u2019 for a wife, and indeed you will hear men say that they are entitled to sex from their wife because they have paid for and own them.\u201d<\/p>\n Lebola is the equivalent to a bride price or dowery. In traditional South African culture, the men of both families meet to determine an appropriate price that the groom must pay for his bride. The payment is often cattle or livestock.<\/p>\n McLaughlin was careful to point out that it\u2019s not only traditional or native cultural practices that can influence the high rates of rape in South Africa. The conservative nature of the Afrikaans culture can have an impact as well.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Afrikaans culture is also very conservative and people believe that a woman\u2019s place is in the home with the children, and that men are strong and the leaders in the household,\u201d McLaughlin said.<\/p>\n This tendency towards patriarchy has also been noted in South African media as well. When asked what factor may play the biggest role in high instances of rapes, Jillian Green a South African journalist who works for The Times<\/em>, agreed that patriarchy was to blame.<\/p>\n \u201cSouth Africa is still very much a patriarchal society where men believe they are superior to women who they believe are there to serve them,\u201d Green said. \u201cIn all the African cultures, be it Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho etc., women are encouraged to be subservient to men. Bow to them, feed them first. Women demanding to be treated as equal is challenging the status quo and some would argue be the cause of gender based violence.\u201d<\/p>\n Fray agreed with Green\u2019s sentiments. Due to cultural customs, women in South Africa lack the confidence to fight back.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom a cultural point of view there are some really embedded practices and beliefs around a woman\u2019s role that often just make it difficult for us to be able to move on from where we are,\u201d Fray said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re a woman very often you wouldn\u2019t feel like you have the agency to stand up against the person. You\u2019re looking at economic issues, you\u2019re looking at social issues, and you\u2019re looking at pervasive roles and expectations of women\u2019s place in society. Women don\u2019t feel like they can stand up and make demands about how they\u2019re treated.\u201d<\/p>\n Entrenched poverty can also lead to high rates of rape in South Africa. Forty-five percent of the population is at or below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. Pervasive poverty can put many women in dangerous or desperate situations.<\/p>\n \u201cEven after 20 years of democracy, we still live with massive inequality and the poor have inadequate housing,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cSometimes many living in the same room and witnessing sexual acts, there\u2019s inadequate access to services and information, high rates of substance abuse, and lack of access to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n Fray elaborated on the economic disparities between middle and upper middle class women and underprivileged women. Living in many of the poorer, urban townships leaves women vulnerable to attack, according to Fray.<\/p>\n \u201cThe things you and I take for granted. Living in a house where you can lock the door, safety around were you\u2019re living doesn\u2019t necessarily exist there,\u201d Fray said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re living in settlements chances are you\u2019re using a toilet that is not inside. You\u2019re having to walk a few 100 meters in the dark to go to the toilet. Commuting to work in the dark. Even taking something like a taxi, and being the last woman on the taxi. It can be a very dangerous situation. Very often women are the most vulnerable in those situations. Some of them are practical and some of them are attitudinal.”<\/p>\n For the women who are raped and\/or attacked and have the strength to be vocal about their experience, many are faced with another significant hurdle: reporting and conviction. Due to the stigma of rape in South Africa, many survivors feel they have nowhere to turn.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you\u2019ll find in South Africa is, we very openly talk about sex and sexuality,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re open about sex and sexuality you should get a greater increase in reporting, but only if the rape victims are being supported by the medical and criminal justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n Many women face barriers when they report rape and sexual violence in local South African police stations. A recent report from the Johannesburg-based Institute for Race Relations, found that more than 1,400 serving police officers, or about one in 100, have a criminal record for serious, violent offenses. Many of these offenses are rape.<\/p>\n \u201cWithin the implementation what you have is, you have gender norms within the police station. A woman will come into the station to lay a charge against her partner, whether it be marital rape, or date rape. And the police are like \u2018what do you mean your husband raped you? That can\u2019t exist\u2019,\u201d Fray said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to take a lot of campaigning, a lot of education for people to be able to recognize that a woman can, in fact, can say no, even to her husband.\u201d<\/p>\n Only one in nine rapes are reported and of those reported only 14 percent of perpetrators of rape are convicted, according to scholarly journal The Lancet<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe criminal justice system has potential for causing secondary trauma to the survivor \u2013 CJS personnel are sometimes insensitive and judgmental, and do not inform the survivor of her rights and her options. Court cases often take over a year to go to trial, and of the fraction that make it to court, only a few end in conviction. This is a huge hurdle in the recovery of a survivor who deserves justice and closure,\u201d McLaughlin said.<\/p>\n Recalling on her own experience, Smith said that while medically things have improved, legally they have not. More and more women are talking with their doctors, but not with legal authorities.<\/p>\n \u201cIn South Africa, medically you\u2019ve got men or women or children who report. And that\u2019s really become advanced since I was raped. However, the criminal justice system is better in the U.S. than in South Africa in terms of protecting people,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n One of the large issues surrounding sexual violence when Smith was raped in 1999 was HIV and STD risks from rape. Even with the growing availability of antiretroviral drugs and antibiotics, health risks continue to be a problem today. There are 6.1 million people living with HIV in South Africa and young women aged 15-24 are four times more likely than men of the same age range to contract the virus, according to the Human Sciences Research Council. Gender-based violence has been listed as one of the primary reasons for this disparity.<\/p>\n \u201cWomen are also more likely to contract HIV or other sexually transmitted infections through rape because of the violence inherent in the act and the tears in the skin that often occur,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cBecause rape drives HIV infections, it places a burden on our services. These services are not sufficient and the burden falls mainly on NGOs and CBOs to fill the gaps where the state is inadequate. Furthermore, the South African government does not prioritise the issue of gender violence, meaning that insufficient funding is allocated to those providing these services.\u201d<\/p>\n National programs and intiatives have been faciliated through the South African government and health ministry, such as the Thuthuzelas Centers and the Sexual Offenses Bill. Anti-rape campaigns have also been intiated throughout the country. Yet, Fray wonders, \u201cWhy after all of the campaigns, after all of the outrage, after all of the programs that we put in place, it still persists.\u201d<\/p>\n Through her work at Rape Crisis, McLaughlin and her staff seem to have the answer. The key to tackling and controlling sexual violence in South Africa is through grass roots efforts, specifically ones that target the young.<\/p>\n![\"Charlene](\"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/04\/smith.jpg\")
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