With it’s socially sanctioned violence, jail terms won’t stop Swazi rapes

THIS week, the first of the year, I’ve spent hours reading the most recent judgments of the Swazi appeal court only to be sickened by the enormity of the rape problem in that country. But while the drive for tougher rape sentences in South Africa came from the legislature, in Swaziland those rumblings come from the bench.

Rape and the correct sentence to impose on rapists was one of the dominating issues during this most recent appeal court session. But while these decisions may be useful, they were made against a complex background not mentioned by the judges.

Here is a country regarded as a pariah state by much of the world because of the absurd, oppressive behaviour of its hereditary dictator, King Mswati III. His lifestyle straddles traditional African customs – many of them appallingly sexist – and the worst Western excesses. It’s a particularly awful and uneasy combination, and while Mswati and his many wives bankrupt the country with their lavish spending, the country suffers deeply.

The incidence of HIV/Aids in Swaziland is the highest in the world. Not only that, infection rates in girls and women are far higher than in men: women account for two of every three newly infected people. Treatment, largely based on donor money, is widely seen as unsustainable; of particular concern is the fact that only half of the children eligible for treatment actually receive it. In addition, one of every three women will experience sexual violence before turning 18.

It’s a problem made more complex by community attitudes in this conservative patriarchal society, with a third of Swazi adults believing that violence against women was justified in “certain circumstances”. Add to this the problem, familiar to South Africans, that the head of state – a polygamist with 14 wives – sets a poor example of “sound sexual practices”.

In the case of Nkosana Dlamini, convicted of raping a two-year-old girl, the appeal court said rape was such a problem that sentences ought to be “ratcheted” up. The judgment included comments about the trial judge who, faced with an unrepresented accused, went out of his way to ensure Dlamini had a fair trial.

That assistance was so “elaborate”, that the court came “perilously close to breaching the borders of fulsomeness”, said the appeal judges.

They added: “Quaffing deeply from the goblet of mercy, and expanding the compassion welling up in his heart almost to bursting point,” the trial judge sentenced the accused to 14 years.

This jail term allowed Dlamini to “escape a much more severe penalty which lay well within the judge’s sentencing competence, for what can only be described as a shocking episode of child abuse”.

The court went on: “The time appears to have come for a ratcheting upwards of the sentences for rape – particularly the rape of young children – in the light of the disturbing numbers and frequency of such cases reaching this court.

“The incidents of rape… of very young children have reached pandemic proportions.”

The judges also referred to the hugely alarming case of three 16year-old boys charged with 18 counts of rape. Bongani Mhlanga and two friends lay in wait for girls on their way home from primary school and then gang-raped them. The girls, aged six to 11, were threatened with further violence if they told anyone.

Mhlanga and his friends used dogs to chase those girls who tried to run away. They raped the girls at knife-point, in a group.

The appeal court in Dlamini’s case said it was particularly disturbing that the first such attack by Mhlanga was reported by the girls to their parents in August 2002, and yet “the ravishing of these children continued unabated” for another three months and it was a further eight months until the boys were charged.

In Mhlanga’s appeal judgment, the court quoted a 2010 appeal decision that noted: “Largely because of the distressing increase in the frequency of rape and related offences, courts… have resorted to sentences of expanding severity in their… attempts to curb these attacks upon women, and to protect them from … sexual predators.”

Of course it’s useful that judges are considering increased sentences. But there are so many other ways that women are oppressed in Swazi society, so much socially-sanctioned violation of their rights, that tougher jail terms alone can do little to make girls and women any safer.

Carmelrickard.posterous.com