Conference to Address Poverty, Role of Women in Politics

“There was a time when delegations participating in the annual (Inter-Parliamentary Union) assembly did not send any women,” said Gwendoline Lindiwe Mahlangu-Nkabinde, deputy speaker of the South African National Assembly, on AllAfrica.com. “Times have changed now, thanks to the efforts of parliaments worldwide.”

Although the focus of the Inter-Parliamentary Union assembly next month in Cape Town is poverty, delegates will address topics like the role of women in politics. They will also offer women delegates the “opportunity to raise matters of importance to them.”

Zimbabwe: Women in Politics

Women marching in the 50-50 campaign last year.

Late last year, numerous NGOs in Zimbabwe embarked on a campaign to include women in 50 percent of the campaigns in the country’s elections on Saturday. Instead, Zimbabwean women, who are half the country’s population, will make up just 13 percent of candidates for the House of Assembly and 30 percent of candidates for the Senate, according to statistics provided by the Women in Politics Support Unit. In an interview with a reporter from Inter Press Service, Luga Shaba, executive director of Women’s Trust, discusses why the NGOs did not meet their mark.

Rural women are the biggest losers in HIV response

From Amnesty International:

Despite gradual improvements in the government’s response to the HIV epidemic and the adoption of a widely-welcomed five-year plan, five and a half million South Africans are HIV-infected – one of the highest numbers in any country in the world. Fifty-five percent of them are women. South African women under 25 are between three and four times more likely to be HIV-infected than men in the same age group.

Many women interviewed by Amnesty International said that they were often unable to protect themselves against HIV infection because they felt at risk of violence when they suggested condom use.

Man accused of raping mentally disabled girl is acquitted

It was the Christmas holiday, and a 13-year-old girl was visiting relatives in the Free State. But when her relatives left the home to buy alcohol, they later found her undressed, and with a man wearing just his trousers.

That man, Mtutuzeli Mvandaba, of Lingelhle, Cradock, was charged with rape. However, on Friday, he was acquitted in the Grahamstown High Court because the girl, who is mentally disabled, is unable to testify.

“Her mood and affect (emotions) are restricted in that there is a restriction in her feeling and tone[, said clinical psychologist Karen Andrews. "]In addition to the appearance of subnormal intelligence, her mental state is characterised by anhedonia – this means she is emotionally withdrawn and indifferent. She has very little interest in her surroundings, or life in general.” [News24]

Senior State advocate Nickie Turner told the judge that under the circumstances she regrettably had no option but to withdraw the charge.

Justices fire back

The hard hitting report released by the Gender Health and Justice Research Unit at the University of Cape Town and the Women’s Legal Centre last week was based on inaccurate information and quotes taken out of context, Justice CM Somyalo of the Eastern Cape High Court Division wrote in the Sunday Times yesterday.

The report offers examples of judges failing to hand down the minimum sentence for those convicted of rape, and showing a lack of sensitivity for rape victims.

Somyalo writes that details on Judge Jeremy Pickering, who according to the report, sentenced a man to 15 years for raping his six-year-old daughter, and then saying the man acted “on the spur of the moment,” was taken out of context.

Unsafe Schools — New report details school-based violence

Neither teachers nor students feel safe in school, according to a new report on school-based violence released this week by the South African Human Rights Commission. Some schoolgirls are exchanging sexual favors for good grades, or “sexually transmitted marks.” The school system is losing thousands of teachers a year due to psychological and physical abuse by students, the report says.

Children’s games have taken on a whole new dimension, with some 7-year-olds playing “hit me, hit me” and “rape me, rape me”, games in which schoolchildren chased and pretended to hit or rape one another.

Rape Victims Face Further Injustice in the Courts

A new report by the Gender, Health and Justice Research Unit at the University of Cape Town says that many judges fail to impose minimum mandatory sentences against rapists and use “flimsy excuses” to avoid handing down harsher sentences.

Legally, rapists should be sentenced to at least 25 years in prison when the victim is raped more than once or is younger than 16.

- Judge Jeremy Pickering sentenced a man to 15 years last year for raping his six-year-old daughter. The judge said the man acted “on the spur of the moment”.

-Judge AJ Visser sentenced Joseph Ntuli to eight years, with four years suspended, for raping a 14-year-old girl twice. In the 2003 sentencing, Judge Visser said the victim, “being the pretty girl she is, might have brought out the animal in the accused”.

-Judge Hendrick Musi sentenced a man to an effective 13 years for raping five girls under the age of 16. He said the rapist “intended no harm other than to satisfy his sexual lust”. [Sunday Times]

The public has a right to decide on Scorpions’ destiny

by Roger Claude Liwanga

(Note: This article was first published in the Opinions section of the Cape Times on Wednesday, March 5).

A couple of decades ago, South Africa was one of those countries where the population was denied the right of public participation. Public participation, which implies “an acknowledgment that both individuals and people are entitled to be masters of their own destinies and participate in decisions that fundamentally affect their lives”, is one of the basic human rights.

Protesters wear miniskirts to rally against assault

The taxi drivers allegedly poured alcohol over her head, stripped her naked, and sexually assaulted her, all because she was wearing a miniskirt, according to media reports. But yesterday, hundreds of people rallied on behalf of 25-year-old Nwabisa Ngcukana and in support of those who have received similar treatment at the Noord Street taxi rank in Johannesburg.

Students Threaten Rainbow Image

The video invokes painful historical imagery — older and larger black women dressed in maids uniforms, sitting on their knees before several 20-something white men. Speaking in Afrikaans, the men call the women whores, and the women call the men master, a term blacks were forced to use during apartheid when addressing whites. Duped into thinking that they are competing in a South African take on “Fear Factor,” the women play rugby, a popular Afrikaner sport, dance, and eat stew laced with urine — all on tape.