How can we change the attitudes to women students, and to rape, on campuses?
Police, not universities, need to investigate and prosecute rape claims
● Spare a thought for the parents, community and clan of Khensani Maseko, the 23-year-old Rhodes University student who committed suicide after she was raped three months ago.
Say a prayer for the parents of the person who raped her and will live with the guilt of having driven her to take her life.
As an alumnus of the institution, I am saddened and sickened that decades after my graduation nothing seems to have changed. I believed then and now, perhaps naively, that if we educated our children, boys and girls, that rape is an evil despot placed at the helm of a patriarchal society and reinforced every time it is used as a weapon in the war against women, we could stop it.
When you hear the experiences of survivors and the nature of their assaults, and how they were treated by the institutions they love, I think it is a revelation for audiences.
A call to 702 from a woman whose mother was raped at Rhodes University in 1946, and now lives in Australia, was breathtaking, as were the words of callers from other universities.
I, like many others, believed that if my university followed guidelines issued by the department of higher education & training that emphasise maintaining the anonymity of the survivor and working in partnership with them to determine how to move forward with a criminal complaint — if the victim desires that — campus rapes would be nipped in the bud.
For many years I believed that once the complaint was lodged with the university authorities who deal with student disciplinary matters, and the appropriate steps were taken if the alleged perpetrator was a student, there would be repercussions, including issuing letters of restraint against the perpetrator and an inquiry by the university’s tribunal, or a court hearing.
We all know that campus rape must be treated the way it is, beyond academia: as a violent crime investigated by state organs and police officers, not campus security, and that it must be prosecuted in courts of law, not academic meeting rooms by administrators. Administrators, however well-intentioned, are not qualified to determine whether a student has committed a crime.
Rape is a universal problem faced by women all over the world and all 26 South African universities, and is certainly not confined to Rhodes.
If we want to see change, then debates, awareness and education about this scourge have to take place on a national or even on a global platform, and gender crimes need to be condemned strongly and loudly in one voice across our nation and at all universities.
We know that rape is a barbaric crime of power and hate; that it is the most effective method of perpetuating the patriarchal system; that it exerts power, terrorises and intimidates and then works to shame victims such as Maseko in order to keep them quiet. But what can we do to prevent it rather than merely tell students who to call when they are assaulted?
For me, the question we want to ask is, how can we help to change the perceptions and attitudes about women students, and subsequently about rape, on campuses?
The answer seems to lie in education. Each university should have co-ordinators who spend time at dormitories conducting workshops about what “no” really means, and how to understand when sex is inappropriate.
How about putting a face on the subject by letting willing rape survivors speak openly about such attacks? How about information tables on all our campuses to distribute facts and figures?
Of course, the most viable strategy is to remain visible and vocal and to inform boys about what rape is. We should continue our struggle to educate our children about the attitudes and myths that have allowed women to become objects, and why objectification causes rape.
I know that enlightenment about rape culture is never easy, but it is a task that we can never allow to lapse, especially now, in light of the scourge of sexual attacks across our universities.
Trawling through social media and listening to talk radio debates, it is clear that rapes are most likely to be perpetrated by a man or boy who is either the woman’s boyfriend or an acquaintance.
The fact that a high percentage of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim makes protecting oneself against rape all the harder, and prosecuting rapists difficult.
The average rapist is just that: average. He’s not a sociopath, he’s not stalking dark alleys, naked under a coat and balaclava. Most rapists are the boy or man in the next dormitory, so ordinary that women don’t think twice about being in their company.
We have heard of young women who told police they were raped at a party. They admitted they had consumed alcohol, which made them intoxicated and thus legally unable to give consent.
Unlike other violent crimes, rape is not declining, which means attitudes have not changed sufficiently. Rape, particularly of women who know their attacker, remains a “he said, she said” debate rather than a criminal act.
How many students on our campuses have been raped while you read this? Educating boys as well as girls about what constitutes rape is essential to reducing the number of victims and perpetrators.
Until students who rape believe that sex without consent will result in a transfer from their dorm to jail, the number of women who risk rape in pursuit of higher education will continue to rise.
We need a fundamental shift in our culture to prevent assaults. It is not just parents of young women who need to caution them; the onus is also on parents of young men to teach them respect for women.
Mkhondo heads the Media and Writers Firm, a ghostwriting and content development and reputation management hub. He is a graduate of Rhodes University’s school of journalism and media studies and a member of the board of governors