A report by the Medical Research Council (MRC) reports that in South Africa, one in 4 men had committed rape. Also a research involving the Metropolitan Police by Sorious Samura states that of 92 young people convicted of involvement in gang rape in London, 66 were black or mixed race.

Samura found that in 2008 alone, the Met received reports of 85 gang rapes- Using the Met's definition of gang rape – those involving three or more perpetrators.

According to Samura, a high proportion of such attacks appear to be carried out by young black men, according to Metropolitan Police statistics. Black people everywhere will surely found these reports disturbing.

“From January 2006 to March 2009, a total of 92 young people were convicted of involvement in gang rape. Of those convicted, 66 were black or mixed race, 13 were white and the remainder were from other countries including”.

Samura concluded; “Clearly this is not a crime exclusive to black communities, but I found it impossible to ignore the fact that such a high proportion were committed by black and mixed-race young men”.

I would hate to imagine the figure for Nigeria if such study is to be conducted in the country. It is not a secret that in Nigeria the majority of rape cases go unreported and culprits are hardly convicted.

In the course of writing this article I spoke with some girls from Nigeria and the story I heard was nauseating to say the least.

Amara (names have been changed) was a 16 year old girl and a virgin (she is now 26). She used to be very good friends with Anoka, a trader in Onitsha. She was living with her auntie who runs a local buka. On this day as on other days Amara had taken a plate of rice to Anoka in his shop when he invited her to his house.

This is not the first time Amara had been over to Anoka’s compound since they all attend the same church. However, on this day Amara was surprised that there was no one else in the house but she was not worried.

Within 30 minutes of her arrival Anoka asked for sex. Amara refused and pointedly told him that she had never indulged in the act and is not ready to start.

Anoka said she was lying and claimed he had seen her with other boys but Amara stood her ground. Before Amara knew what was happening Anoka had ceased her and tore her cloths. Amaka could not believe what was happening and started wailing and begging for mercy. All her pleading fell on deaf ears and Anoka had her way.

With blood all over the place Anoka realized what he has done and started to beg for forgiveness but it’s too late. The pain was unbearable and Amara could hardly walk home. 

The pain, hatred and despise Amara had for Anoka was so great that she stated she was actually happy the day she learned Anoka had died in a road accident.

Of the more than 25 percent of South African men that have raped, nearly half said they had raped more than one person, says the report by the Medical Research Council (MRC).

Half the men in the study were under 25 years old and 70 percent were under 30 years old. Of the 27.6 percent of men who had committed rape, "23.2 percent of men said they had raped two to three women, 8.4 percent had raped four to five women, 7.1 percent said they had raped six to 10, and 7.7 percent said they had raped more than 10 women or girls," the report said. 

"Asked about their age at the first time they had forced a woman or girl into sex, 9.8 percent said they were under 10 years old, 16.4 percent were 10-14 years old, 46.5 percent were 15-19 years old, 18.6 percent were 20-24 years old, 6.9 percent were 25-29 years old, and 1.9 percent were 30 or older." 

According to the study, it is estimated that 500,000 rapes are committed annually in South Africa and that for every 25 men accused of rape, only one is convicted of the crime. South Africa also has the world highest number of people living with HIV/AIDS: 5.5 million in a population of about 48 million. 

Prevalence in the sample group was "striking". "Among all men aged 25 to 45 [it] was in excess of 25 percent, and among those aged 30 to 39 years, over 40 percent.

"Men who disclosed having raped were significantly more likely to have engaged in a range of other risky sexual behaviours. They were more likely to have had more than 20 sexual partners, transactional sex, sex with a prostitute, heavy alcohol consumption, to have been physically violent towards a partner, raped a man, and not to have used a condom consistently in the past year."

What factors encourage high incidence of rape?

Significant factors in the high incidence of rape were parent absenteeism, childhood trauma, bullying, teasing and "deeply embedded ideas about South African manhood ... which can be predominantly addressed through strategies of apprehension and prosecution of perpetrators" the report said.

Another factor is a legal system that favours rapists. Nhlanhla Mokoena, a coordinator at People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA), a gender activist NGO, told IRIN that the "law is on the side of perpetrators [of rape], rather than of the side of [rape] survivors." 

Like other criminal cases, rape cases were plagued by delays, lost dockets, misplaced rape kits, and overworked prosecutors; complainants were further burdened by the "patriarchal society", which placed the burden of proof on the complainant, while questioning her style of clothing and why she was out late at night or why she attended so-and-so party of got drunk.

In other words blaming the victim and there were often years of delay before a rape case came to trial, all of which was detrimental to the success of rape prosecutions.

Delays often led to complainants dropping charges, as was starkly illustrated by the "Buyisiwe" trial. Buyisiwe was gang-raped in 2005 by eight men who broke into her home in Tembisa, a township in eastern Johannesburg. She was then paraded in the streets, naked, before being gang-raped again next to a pit toilet.

The men were all aged between 17 and 20 at the time, and predicated their defence on Buyisiwe being a sex worker. The case was postponed about 20 times in a court dedicated to dealing with sex crimes before POWA applied to the Johannesburg High Court for the case to be moved.

Eventually, seven of the men were found guilty in the High Court, but another suspect is still at large. Sentencing is set down for July 2009. 

Male Disturbing attitudes about rape

Sorious Samura presented his findings in a television programme presented on Channel 4; 'Dispatches: Rape in the City'. Analysing his own investigation of this horrendous crime in the UK he asked; Is Gang rape a race issue?

He narrated two big cases that hit the headlines last year: 

In December, nine schoolboys, some as young as 13 at the time of the attack, were convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl. She was dragged between tower blocks in Hackney where she was threatened with a knife, hit and raped during an ordeal that lasted an hour and a half – some of which was filmed on mobile phones.

In January, three men were convicted of gang raping a 16-year-old with learning disabilities for two hours before dousing her with caustic soda in an effort to get rid of the evidence.As a black man as well as a journalist, he wanted to understand what lay behind such attacks. So he spoke to victims, groups of black and mixed-race teenagers, youth and social workers and community leaders. 

The groups of young men he met in London expressed some profoundly disturbing attitudes towards girls and sex. The boys explained how they make arrangements for "line-ups" in which one girl has oral sex with up to six or seven of them at one time. These arrangements might be made at school or on mobile phones.

Sometimes these girls initially consent because they want to be popular. But these events can spiral into rape because the boys consider that any girl who is prepared to agree to a line-up can be considered fair game. One boy said: "If she wants to go and meet a bag of boys then she's probably a jezzie [slut], and if she's going to a house its over – she's going to get beaten [have sex]."

In other instances, as some of the victims in the film describe, girls can unwittingly walk into a trap, innocently visiting someone's house to listen to music or watch a film only to discover that a group of boys are lying in wait. Or they might be hanging out with friends in a park and suddenly realise they have become surrounded by a group of boys intent on sex. 

For both boys and girls, the line between this sort of group sex and rape seems to be blurred. A girl might agree to have oral sex with two or three boys but then be ordered to have sex with six or seven. The teenage girls he met said that boys simply don't understand what rape is. And yet this is a crime that can ruin lives and is punishable by life imprisonment.

Occasionally gang rape is used to punish a girl for minor transgressions against gang members. In one of the most shocking interviews, a girl who admitted she had helped to set up girls for gang rape told of how as the girlfriend of a gang member, she organised these rapes, partly out of fear and partly to fit in.

She admitted she was terrified of being raped herself and had walked away when witnessing a girl being gang-raped at a party because she feared she might be next: "There was just loads of boys and the girl's tights were ripped up, like, she was bleeding as well, because I think she was a virgin, and they were just taking turns on her basically, and she was crying, and I didn't get involved because I thought if I get involved they're gonna turn on me."

Effects of rape

The victims' descriptions of their attacks are horrific. One young victim likened her attack to being "pulled and pushed around like a rag doll", while another 14-year-old girl described her ordeal when she was gang raped by a total of nine boys who told her that she was not the only girl they had attacked. In that case, nine boys were subsequently convicted of raping her. The youngest perpetrator was just 12 years old.

In the programme, the Rev Joyce Daley, from the Black Parents Forum in Hackney, said that gang rape is not a rare or one-off phenomenon. It is happening on a regular basis. She said: "It could actually explode on our very streets." Steve Griffith, a youth worker in King's Cross, said: "I see too much abuse of young women on the streets."

Gang rape, while constituting only a tiny percentage of all rapes in the UK, is a horrible reality. The nature of the crime is very appalling. What seems evident from Somura’s investigation is that the key to preventing it will be changing the way young men view women and the kind of group sexual activity they are engaging in at such a young age.

Sheldon Thomas, a youth worker in Brixton, said: "We've got a generation that looks at sex as if it's nothing, and treats disrespecting women as if it's nothing. These guys are like 13, 14 and 15, and their actual attitudes towards young girls – towards sex – is mind-blowing. It's actually leaving you asking: where are their morals, where are their values?"

Harmful masculinity 

The MRC study on South Africa also said that to combat rape, society had to address "ideas of masculinity ... [based] on marked gender hierarchy and sexual entitlement of men", and recommended that "rape prevention must focus centrally on changing social norms around masculinity and sexual entitlement."

Mogomotsi Mfalapitsa, spokesman for EngenderHealth, an international NGO promoting sexual and reproductive health in poor communities, told IRIN that from the cradle the boy child was bombarded with "harmful masculinity" messages, from the toy gun to the belief that men should have "multiple concurrent sexual partners", and that it was a man's "right to have sex". 

All males are pulled through the mud [by the incidence of rape in South Africa] he said. And it means they cannot even play with their nieces without arousing suspicion. Cultural traditions, such as circumcision schools, had become corrupted, with initiates engaging in rape "to test the new parts", and their crimes claimed as "culture", while the victims did not report the rapes because they were told it was "part of culture". 

The same attitude obtains in Nigeria. One boy told me how he raped a 15 year old girl that hawks fried groundnut around their area. He invited her into the house under the pretext of buying her wares. He then brought out a machete and threatened to kill her if she raised her voice.

In Nigeria, masters rape their maids, sons rape the maids, some fathers reportedly even rape their daughters and yet these girls are shamed into silence, afraid of the long term societal consequences of exposure

These boys should be made aware of the long-term consequences of this appalling “fun”. Changing a society deeply imbued with these perceptions by targeting the male child and extolling the virtues of gender equality would lessen the incidence of rape.

The prize for the most heartbreaking of the rape stories I listened to was that of Mary (not her real name) mainly because of the sad after-effect. She was raped at 15, and till date, she has always hated men, had never been in a relationship and is still single at 32.  

afamefuna@elombah.com

www.elombah.com

Robot  # 1 | 30.06.2009 23:54

A report by the Medical Rese... (MRC) reports that in South Africa, one in 4 men had committed rape. Also a research involving the Metropolitan Police by Sorious Samura states that of 92 young people convicted of involvement in gang rape in London, 66 were black or mixed race. Samura found that in 2008 alone, the Met received reports of 85 gang rapes- Using the Met's definition of gang rape – those involving three or more perpetrators. According to Samura, a high proportion of such attacks appear to be carried out by young black men, a...Read the full article.

M. Akosa  # 2 | 01.07.2009 02:24

Thank you Danny for writing this article. Myself as a gender issues specialist, I am compelled to contribute on this dreadful Black and African problem of rape. I am also a survivor of a previous dysfunctional marital relationship. I survived and it made me what I am today, with a better understanding of those issues. Most Nigerian men feel they own a woman, or can always have access to her even when no longer in relationship. They can always use their children or all sorts as excuses for those contacts. Their sense of boundary is non-existent. The highly prevalent cases of masters raping their housegirls and maids is also troubling in Nigeria. Also cases of "uncles" abusing younger family members who are vulnerable or dependent is also a very worrying issue in Nigeria. When discoveries are made about these perverse sexual relationships within Nigerian families, all they do in Nigeria is to chase the poor innocent girls away, often penniless, to wander about hopelessly for the rest of their lives. I am very thankful to South Africans, always our continent's pace setters in advancing the rights of women, for this wonderful world class research and findngs they have on the issue of rape. This report came at a very good time, when South Africa has Jacob Zuma as President. A man who all knows too well about those issues. Rape is by far the greatest threat to the development of African women and girls than anything else. The world watches as rape is systematically utilized in Congo and Darfur to destroy entire families and communities. South African rape is also worrying, although it is not a tool of warfare, but we can can term it as social carelessness among many female victims of rape. They tend to easily compromise themselves when socialising with men. It is also part of their culture to have women and girls dancing half naked for drunk men to oogle at their breast. Young boys even feel no remorse in selecting their targets, as it their culture to express their manhood through consensual sex or even rape girls who they deem as too difficult. Overall, African girls and women needs to be seriously educated and awareness raised on social skills and how to relate to males in potentialy compromising environments, in order to reduce those dreadful social or date rapes and so on.

Simbili  # 3 | 01.07.2009 10:05

Well expressed. Not only education and exposure. The laws have be effective to deal with criminals who indulge in such crimes against humanity. Without law and order in any society, criminals set the tone for culture and tradition.

maikanodahiru  # 4 | 01.07.2009 13:22

Thanks for bringing this issue to NVS. Other factors that lead to rape in Africa include the believe that HIV positive patient will become negative if he had sex with a virgin,psychological imbalance and sheer cruelty.In some cases it is even committed by a close relative like a step father,uncle or cousin. I believe it is only when very harsh punishment is prescibed for the culprits that the incidence may reduce. Abdullahi

Eace  # 5 | 02.07.2009 04:01

Many thanks to the writer for this article. Rape is a terrible thing; both for the victim and for the criminal even though the latter often does not think so. But the concern must be for the victim: for the person whose spirit and being has been abused, subjugated, oppressed, humiliated and mutilated. The memory never goes away and often will lead to severe psychological pressures that will often manifest in negative attitues towards herself and to others. Interestingly, apart from the cruelty of wars and the attacks by serial rapists where the victims are randomly picked, most victims of rape actually know their attackers. Most have some form of relationship with their attackers which begs the question - why do they still fall victim? Why do they not complain? Why does our society prefer not to talk about this? What do we do? Women must be educated; they must be directed to the knowledge that they are the owners of their bodies and the primary defenders of themselves. Even with the emancipation of women in these contemporary times, women subconsciously hold the view that they are inferior to men; cannot physically defend themselves and; somehow need male approval for their very existence. From a young age, women think they ought not to resist unwanted male attention; they believe they can never overpower a man; they play up to female competition - trying to be more glamourous, more daring, more sophisticated than other women and even more sexually aware than men, which often puts them into the very situations they ought to be avoiding. Talks, seminars, school visitations by those women who can speak to young adults is important. I have tried to do this on a number of occasions and I have always been touched by how vulnerable young girls really are and how grateful they are to have someone else affirm their right to be feminine but not weak, beautiful but not vain and, bold without being brash. Women also need empowerment - to understand that they are human just as well as men and to appreciate that while they may not have as much brawn as men, that their intuition and intelligence will always come to their assistance if only they would learn to use these natural talents. Criminal punishment is important but I consider that self empowerment is even more important because the 'victim' must first be able to identify the crime, to know its many forms, to understand the circumstances which may lead to rape and try as much as possible to avoid them and, to be sufficiently angered enough to speak up against it.

eire  # 6 | 02.07.2009 06:44

I wonder when article writers like this one are going to discuss paedophilia and serial murders - which are globally recognised as exclusively WHITE crimes! It is as thou the white western world decides for both white and black journalists what to write about, priority depends on what these western media house dictate are issues to be discussed and spread - They are writing ONLY mainly about black crimes while our own writers are writing about BLACK crimes too. Racial profiling when discussing crimes and statistics is on the increase like a new tool to further dehumanise and humiliate us in the global arena. It is very rich to say that rape is ever more common among blacks when in fact most families in the western world have recorded rape (which they softened to family child abuse and paedophilia when it involves white persons). Majority of the white women I have as friends confess to either been sexually assaulted by their fathers, a relative or priest, the newspapers write and call it a medical condition afflicting several white men but stop short of calling it rape - these numbers are not included in the same statistics that are used to dictate the numbers of cases the police release to the media and public! The shame of it all is that black people like this writer will not write and include white people in their articles. it is as thou they are untouchable in the media, a people to totally exclude when they tell us we are the criminals and they are not. A few years ago in Ireland, The European union set up an anonymous child abuse helpline. The centre had to be closed because they were overwhelmed by phone calls from little children reporting sexual abuse by relatives, calls totally 175,000 were made from a population of ONLY 4 million. What I later read in the Irish papers was a warning to the female population about African males who are potentials rapists! A stupid Nigerian article writer later echoed what the Irish papers were saying and wrote a similar article like this one titled "rape and the Blackman" His article again ended with something like, although there are no statistics on rape in Nigeria but it must be so many because NIGERIA MUST HAVE A LARGE NUMBER OF RAPISTS ON ACCOUNT OF US BEING PRONE TO ANY TYPE OF CRIMINAL ACTIVITY. I often wonder what sort of mental and psychological abuse Nigerians went through during colonisation and new-colonisation to make them develop such colo-mentality that the west use against us so badly!

edoji  # 7 | 02.07.2009 09:07

=eire;368476>I wonder when article writers like this one are going to discuss paedophilia and serial murders - which are globally recognised as exclusively WHITE crimes! It is as thou the white western world decides for both white and black journalists what to write about, priority depends on what these western media house dictate are issues to be discussed and spread - They are writing ONLY mainly about black crimes while our own writers are writing about BLACK crimes too. Racial profiling when discussing crimes and statistics is on the increase like a new tool to further dehumanise and humiliate us in the global arena. It is very rich to say that rape is ever more common among blacks when in fact most families in the western world have recorded rape (which they softened to family child abuse and paedophilia when it involves white persons). Majority of the white women I have as friends confess to either been sexually assaulted by their fathers, a relative or priest, the newspapers write and call it a medical condition afflicting several white men but stop short of calling it rape - these numbers are not included in the same statistics that are used to dictate the numbers of cases the police release to the media and public! The shame of it all is that black people like this writer will not write and include white people in their articles. it is as thou they are untouchable in the media, a people to totally exclude when they tell us we are the criminals and they are not. A few years ago in Ireland, The European union set up an anonymous child abuse helpline. The centre had to be closed because they were overwhelmed by phone calls from little children reporting sexual abuse by relatives, calls totally 175,000 were made from a population of ONLY 4 million. What I later read in the Irish papers was a warning to the female population about African males who are potentials rapists! A stupid Nigerian article writer later echoed what the Irish papers were saying and wrote a similar article like this one titled "rape and the Blackman" His article again ended with something like, although there are no statistics on rape in Nigeria but it must be so many because NIGERIA MUST HAVE A LARGE NUMBER OF RAPISTS ON ACCOUNT OF US BEING PRONE TO ANY TYPE OF CRIMINAL ACTIVITY. I often wonder what sort of mental and psychological abuse Nigerians went through during colonisation and new-colonisation to make them develop such colo-mentality that the west use against us so badly! What a writer dwells on and the issue he highlights often depends on his/her audience and the data available to him. NVS is a Nigerian forum and so this writer is highlighting an issue that he feels would be an issue for Nigerians to think about. Eire could write on paedophilia and other “exclusive white crimes” to show that crimes are not the exclusive property of any race. In any case, it is debatable that paedophilia and serial murder are “exclusive white crimes” please read this article (http://elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=677:horror-incest-in-nigeria-written-by-bunmi-fasehun&catid=46:naija-gossip&Itemid=64) to learn about how widespread paedophilia and incest in Nigeria. The appalling issue about sex crimes in Nigeria is that they are hardly mentioned. As an 11 year old boy, I actually witnessed a 60 year(?) old man messing up with a 13 year old girl! We kids knew, but no other adult in the compound dare learn about that - That is life in big metropolitan cities in Nigeria.

Bamaguje  # 8 | 06.07.2009 08:05

I am kind of disappointed that the writer didn’t mention the conflict in Eastern D.R.Congo where the worst cases of rape in Africa have been reported. =eire;368476>I wonder when article writers like this one are going to discuss paedophilia and serial murders - which are globally recognised as exclusively WHITE crimes! I wonder when article writers like this one are going to discuss paedophilia and serial murders - which are globally recognised as exclusively WHITE crimes! – eire The author is obviously Black man rightly concerned about problems of Black men that shame all of us Negroid males, bring us to disrepute and may lead to undue stereotyping of Black men as rapists. White people can deal with their own problems. Secondly as edoji rightly points out what makes you so sure there aren’t any Black pedophiles and serial killers ? What do you call the ritual killers who harvest human body parts ? How about the notorious cannibal - Clifford Orji ? In Naija, paedophillia is barely recognized as a crime and rarely reported. That is why pre-pubertal girls can be married of here in the North. Later when they get pregnant and develop VVF, the girls are abandoned. Up here in the North, Daily Trust has reported several celebrated cases. I have no doubt that there are also unreported cases of child rape in the South.

Eace  # 9 | 06.07.2009 09:21

=Bamaguje;369379>I am kind of disappointed that the writer didn’t mention the conflict in Eastern D.R.Congo where the worst cases of rape in Africa have been reported. In Naija, paedophillia is barely recognized as a crime and rarely reported. That is why pre-pubertal girls can be married of here in the North. Later when they get pregnant and develop VVF, the girls are abandoned. Up here in the North, Daily Trust has reported several celebrated cases. I have no doubt that there are also unreported cases of child rape in the South. Bamaguje, God bless you. Even if you don't believe in God, let Him bless you still.