Rhodes stress over rape spares no-one
● A student pushed her finger against the forehead of Rhodes University vicechancellor Dr Sizwe Mabizela, saying: “I wish your daughters could get raped.”
Mabizela, whose campus has been roiled by periodic protests and outrage over rape for two years, said this week that he had had to send his two daughters to boarding school in East London after threats that they would be kidnapped.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Mabizela said his family have been “very, very concerned” about his safety and welfare, especially after the suicide of Professor Bongani Mayosi, the former dean of health sciences at the University of Cape Town.
“They are really worried about the pressures of working in higher education and the kind of traumas and the violence, both psychological and physical, that one has to contend with,” Mabizela said.
“I do receive correspondence from people who are quite intent on inflicting mental and psychological torture on me."
In April 2016, anti-rape protests flared at Rhodes after a list of alleged rapists was circulated on social media.
Police fired stun grenades during one of the protests, and someone told Mabizela’s elder daughter that he had been killed in the incident.
Student anger was directed at Mabizela after the university took action against protesters who it felt had gone too far.
“What really keeps me going is that the majority of young people are really decent,” the vice-chancellor said.
Rhodes is now seeking legal opinion on how to deal with recent social media posts that named and shamed three male students as alleged rapists.
“These young people have come to see me to say: ‘I have never raped any person.’ I’m worried that some of them will be pushed to the stage where they kill themselves.”
We are deeply saddened by the death of Khensani and, in fact, her death does indicate that there’s a lot more to be done
Dr Sizwe Mabizela
Rhodes vice-chancellor
Mabizela said the posts had been taken down quickly, but they had been widely seen.
The latest rape accusations on social media came shortly after Khensani Maseko, 23, a law student at Rhodes, committed suicide at her home in Alberton, Gauteng, just days after telling university authorities her boyfriend had raped her.
Mabizela said Rhodes students had “a heightened sense of awareness” on issues of sexual and gender-based violence and that any hint of such abuse, “quite correctly so”, got students up in arms. “As a vice-chancellor it’s something I celebrate.”
The university has been involved for more than a decade in initiatives to raise awareness of the issue.
“We are deeply saddened by the death of Khensani and, in fact, her death does indicate that there’s a lot more to be done,” the vicechancellor said.
He said that on the eve of her funeral, police minister Bheki Cele had called him to set up a meeting so he could get a better understanding of how police could deal with sexual and gender-based violence on campuses.
Mabizela said the university’s administration wanted students to be confident that its systems would subject perpetrators “to the full extent of disciplinary procedures”.
He said, however, that most incidents of sexual and gender-based violence took place between young people who knew each other.
“It’s not possible to place a security guard next to every bed. Young men should understand that if a woman says no, it is no.”
He also said he was disappointed at the lack of progress in racially transforming the professoriate staff at Rhodes.