Janet Smith
Looks at the issue
ATEENAGE girl is struggling to continue with her life. She has spent the better part of the week at Charles Johnson Memorial Hospital in rural Nquthu, KwaZulu-Natal, having tried to commit suicide by overdosing on sleeping tablets.
She told a daily newspaper this was because her community had been calling her names like “esincane” (little b*tch) and her parents have been saying she is a disgrace to their family.
But the source of all this misery is her 45-year-old teacher at Ekucabangeni Secondary School, also in Nquthu, who is accused of the sexual assault and statutory rape of at least five other schoolgirls aged between 14 and 17.
The teacher recorded the abuse in explicit videos which were distributed widely enough for the Grade 11, who was in hospital this week, to be recognised.
“The video humiliated me and my family in the community,” she told the Sowetan newspaper.
Meanwhile the school’s governing body chairman, Sithembiso Sibisi, said: “I don’t want to lie to you… all those girls have been the laughing stock of the community since the incidents were uncovered.”
It’s shocking that the teacher is still at large after pupils at the school torched the cottage in which the alleged assaults took place. Still, the portfolio committee on basic education this week, while it “noted with grave concern” the allegations, commended the MEC for education in KwaZulu-Natal for “the very progressive action it has taken by laying criminal charges of statutory rape against the alleged perpetrator”.
That is a positive step, but how many times do we hear that the government and political parties are concerned about what happens to women themselves when they lay charges of rape?
And there are many such brave women, like President Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser, Khwezi.
Our crime statistics of last September show that sexual offences in our country are about to overtake those of war zones like the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are, on average, 147 sexual offence cases a day, adding up to about 53 000 a year.
This is why Khwezi matters. And this is why the four young women who staged a silent protest in front of Zuma as he stood on the podium at the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) on August 6 upon the municipal election results announcement matter.
Most of all, this is why former cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils matters, because it is he who this week drew our visceral attention to Khwezi again, and to what can happen to women who charge men with rape.
Khwezi, for all her anonymity, remains the most powerful