Rape

By: Liza Gilhuly

SAMGI is currently working on a new issue of Making Waves, the quarterly newspaper, that focuses on gender-based violence.  One of the first things that comes to mind when thinking of gender-based violence is rape and what this term actually means.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines rape to mean, “unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent.”  The keyword in that definition is the “usually” before “sexual intercourse”.  This definition suggests that rape doesn’t always have to involve sexual intercourse…which it doesn’t.  However, under old South Africa law, a man or woman who used an object to penetrate someone else was not classified as a rapist.  Many would consider this to still be rape and would hope that the assailant would be charged accordingly.  Yet, because of the wording of the law, all he or she could be charged with was indecent assault, which carried as punishment a measley fine.

To avoid this problem altogether, South Africa instead started using the term “sexual assault”, as this encompasses all possible definitions of rape.  The United States implemented this change in the late 1970’s as well after a large surge in rape law reform and also began recognizing “marital rape”.  Although South Africa has yet to accomplish the latter, there have been some very essential changes made in the last ten years.  These include the criminal law amendment act, which allowed for more extensive action taken against convicted rapists, and the immorality amendment act, which classified rape as gender neutral (meaning men can be victims as well).  One of the most important reforms, however, was the dissolvement of the “cautionary rule”, which stated that women tended to lie about sexual assault and could therefore not provide testimony for their own case.  This reform marked a very important stepping stone on the path to breaking the traditional, narrow-minded, definition of rape.

So although South Africa still has some work to do in terms of rape law and prevention, the government is not turning a completely blind eye and changes are being made.  Perhaps one day, South African women will feel safe walking the streets of their cities.