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NO ONE DESERVES SEXUAL HARASSMENT

19/08/2018 00:50:00 BY MANCOBA MABUZA

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No one deserves to be raped,’ posted Khensani Maseko on Instagram before she killed herself. The death of this 23-year-old Rhodes University student, who killed herself two months after an alleged rape has left millions of people in general and women in particular angry over sexual violence against women in our society.

On August 3, the day she took her own life, Maseko posted this message – ‘No one deserves to be raped’.
As one would imagine, Khensani was a sister, daughter, cousin, friend, niece and colleague to some. She was highly valued, not only by her family and close friends, but also by society as a whole. She had a bright future too.

“Khensi‚ your tragic passing left a gaping and bleeding hole in my heart. You were my pride and joy from the moment I held you for the first time. I loved you with every fibre in me‚“ her mother Thembi Thobile Maseko is reported to have said at the funeral. “You were my child and yet the little sister I never had. We had a wonderful life together. We shared the highs and the lows,” she continued.

While some people may approach this with endless speculation, the bottom line is: the young woman reported rape and later on took her life after warning the rest of us that no one deserves to be raped. Period!
Now, the bigger question is: how safe is our African society?

sexual violence

How safe are our friends and relatives in the face of such persistent rape in our African society? Statistics show that sexual violence against women is a serious problem in the African continent. According to estimates released in June by the National Statistical Service of South Africa, 138 out of every 100 000 women in that country were raped in 2016 and 2017. “This figure is among the highest in the world. For this reason, some have labelled South Africa the ‘rape capital of the world,’’ it said.
Coming closer to home, it is reported that violence against female children is highly prevalent in Eswatini. Approximately one in three females experienced some form of sexual violence as a child; nearly one in four females experienced physical violence as a child; and approximately three in 10 females experienced emotional abuse as a child (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Swaziland United Nations Children’s Fund, 20017).
This is also reflected in the numerous media reports on sexual offences and domestic violence in our country.

urgent action
When you go to neighbouring Mozambique, there is a huge problem as well. In 2016, Women in Mozambique described the country’s rape statistics as alarming and demanded that the Mozambican authorities take urgent action.

This was after startling reports by media; one involving a 35-year-old woman who was raped and killed by five individuals in Maputo’s Xipamanine neighbourhood, and the same week, a 16-year-old was raped by four men in the Guava neighbourhood in the outskirts of Maputo, and also died on the spot. Shocking, isn’t it?
In Kenya, At least 86 cases of sexual and gender-based violence were either reported or documented in Nairobi in the run up to last year’s election and after. What is more painful in this case is that 62 per cent of the sexual violence cases were perpetrated by police while 38 per cent by civilians (Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, 2017).

Among the many painful incidences was that of a 27-year-old woman in one of the informal settlements of Nairobi, who was interviewed by Human Rights Watch last year. She was raped by a man she said wore ‘combat trousers’ in the presence of her 12-year-old son.

According to Human Rights Watch, this woman did not report the sexual assault to the police because she did not know the attackers and feared retaliation.
Many of the women Human Rights Watch interviewed described the perpetrators as mostly police officers or men in uniform who often carried guns, batons, tear gas canisters, whips, or wore helmets and other anti-riot gear.

Some women who reported sexual violence were sent back to their homes without police taking statements, or they ridiculed them, verbally abused them, or failed to follow up on complaints (Human Rights Watch, 2017).

If you go to the western part of our continent – in Ghana – approximately six women are likely to be raped every week, according to six-year statistics (2011-2016) from the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service.

gang-raped by soldiers.

Recently, Al Jazeera reported that thousands of women fleeing the conflict in South Sudan have been raped and sexually assaulted. It is said that many women who survived described how their husbands were killed before they were gang-raped by government soldiers.

Up north, the situation is also terrible. In 2013 The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women published a report showing the most recent statistics of sexual harassment in Egypt.

The study shows that 99.3 per cent of Egyptian women have experienced some form of sexual harassment. The study indicates that 96.5 per cent of women in their survey said that sexual harassment came in the form of touching, which was the most common manifestation of sexual harassment.

barbarism ACT
Now, how do we get out of such barbarism and backwardness as a continent?
We need to look at rape as an extreme end point of a whole continuum of sexually aggressive male behaviours, beginning with sexual harassment and ending in rape and in some cases murder.

Look at it this way: women undergo verbal and emotional abuses on a daily basis along the streets, in diners and office parks and these are usually dismissed as being ‘minor’ or simply ‘normal’ until these behaviours build up to a rape or murder.
Looking at such harassments as being seriously offensive could be a useful reminder that sexually aggressive behaviours are often just an extension of what frequently passes for normal sexual behaviour.

When it happens, sexual harassment is often dismissed as being just an acceptable act, which denies its relevance to rape.
The origin of rape lies in sexual harassment. Therefore we need to confront the traditional and/or cultural habits that undermine women dignity and begin to look into bad sexual behaviours such as harassment with disgust and shame, so that we can uproot rape at its origin.

We must confront and put to an end certain looks, improper touches and unpalatable words that are aimed at making women feel uncomfortable in their own society.

That is one step towards getting rid of rape. Prevention is better than cure. Of course there are other ways through which we can defeat this animal called rape and do so at its origin, but today I make an appeal to consider harshness against its cousin called sexual harassment because it builds up to rape.
If I were to rephrase Khensani’s words I would say: no one deserves sexual harassment!