"the current case against Mr. Zuma is forcing South Africa to confront key elements of a culture of rape so pervasive that, on average, one woman is raped in this country every 26 seconds, according to People Opposing Women Abuse, a women's group here. It's one of the highest rape rates in the world."
One of the darkest books I've read recently is Bitter Fruit, a South African novel by Achmat Dangor. It centers on the rape of the main female character by a white policeman during apartheid. The incident continues to haunt her in the post apartheid era and eventually leads to the disintegration of the whole family. Rape in the book, in light of the statistics about rape now and the use of rape during apartheid, is certainly more than a metaphor for the violence of the past era.
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I also find the linking of certain cultures with rape problematic to put it mildly. The article talks about how this problem is almost specific to South Africa, and at best the surrounding African countries. I am troubled with any such correlation between culture and rape. I was just at this conference were an Australian Grad student was trying to make such a link. Her argument is that some cultures (the brown kind) are more predisposed to use rape as an instrument of war; she argued that mass rapes as an instrument of war and ethnic cleansing as in the Yugoslavian civil war would never happen in the USA or in Australia.
I agree that such linkages are very very problematic: they are often racist and false. Rape was an instrument of apartheid violence in South Africa used by whites against black. If there is a culture of rape here it has been inherited from apartheid.
ps. I don't mean to idealize South African society and blame all on apartheid: I'm just saying that the violent history of the country and the way rape was used against black must contribute to the current trauma and violence.
ps2. I hope someone told that presenter that white people do rape in wars--brown men haven't cornered the battlefield on this one.
Actually one of my proudest moments was when some of my students ripped her and her arguments to shreds. :)
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