More than 1 in 3 South African men say they've committed rape, new survey says

Associated Press

By Nastasya Tay 

November 26, 2010

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A new survey says more than one in three South African men admit to having committed rape.

A 2010 study led by the government-funded Medical Research Foundation says that in Gauteng province, home to South Africa's most populous city of Johannesburg, more than 37 percent of men said they had raped a woman. Nearly 7 percent of the 487 men surveyed said they had participated in a gang rape.

More than 51 percent of the 511 women interviewed said they'd experienced violence from men, and 78 percent of men said they'd committed violence against women.

A quarter of the women interviewed said they'd been raped, but the study says only one in 25 rapes are reported to police.

A survey by the same organization in 2008 found that 28 percent of men in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces said they had raped a woman or girl. Of the men who had committed rape, one third did not feel guilty, said Rachel Jewkes, a lead researcher on both studies.

Two-thirds of the men surveyed in that study said they raped because of a sense of sexual entitlement. Other popular motivating factors included a desire to punish women who rejected or angered them, and raping out of boredom, Jewkes said.

"Rape is completely trivialized by a great number of men. It is seen as a legitimate activity," she said.

Jewkes believes South Africa's history of racial division and associated trauma is part of the reason of the high incidence of sexual violence in the country.

"Apartheid has contributed to culture of impunity surrounding rape in South Africa," said Jewkes. Men who were abused or experienced trauma during their childhood are much more likely to rape, she said, adding that apartheid destroyed family life, fostering violence and anti-social behavior.

The apartheid period also saw very little enforcement of common law, which has contributed to a culture of impunity, said Jewkes.

"We need to start interventions in childhood, focusing on building a more empowering childhood environment in South Africa, especially for boys," she said, "and we need to make it worth their while for women to report sexual violence."

Apparently, the most prosperous and ordered country in Sub-Saharan Africa--one in which poor Blacks from across the continent were trying to immigrate into--represents a great "trauma" for Black South Africans, social pain they seek to dispel by raping their own women and those of the remaining Johannesburg Whites. One wonders: Is there any limit to sociologists' willingness to explain away--and quasi-justify--Black behavior?  

This blurb is up at The American Conservative.

The World Cup kicks off in two days, with South Africa playing host to the highlight of the soccer season. In Foreign Policy, Nicholas Griffin details how the game helped end apartheid in the country and continues to ease racial tensions—though it also shows how much work is still to be done.

I expect liberals and neo-cons to see “racial tensions” as the biggest problem facing South Africa, but Buchanan’s old magazine?

You’ve probably heard the term “voting with their feet.”  Conservatives correctly argue that because people run away from socialist countries and settle in (relatively) free ones, it’s compelling evidence that capitalism is a superior system.  The idea even has its own Wikipedia page.

As much as capitalism has been a success worldwide, by the same measure black rule in South Africa has been a miserable failure.  Between 1995 and 2005 a fifth of whites left.  Undoubtably others would like to go somewhere else but lack the means to do so. 

Maybe one could argue that racial discrimination is such an absolute evil that it must be outlawed no matter the cost.  But even by those standards (which I reject) the new vibrant South Africa isn’t much better than the old.  A full 80 percent of jobs are now required to go to blacks, meaning that a state that once discriminated against those who were by and large incompetent anyway has been replaced by one that hinders the life prospects of its more intelligent and civilized population.  See this heartbreaking piece from the Guardian about the South African whites who can’t afford to move into homogenous communities “protected by razor wire, electrified fences, security guards, dogs and surveillance cameras.”

Once again, to Frum Forum and National Review nothing I've said here matters. They agree with liberals that when the issue is anti-black racism, all other considerations -- winning elections, freedom of speech, freedom of association, having a first world country, the American Constitution, being able to walk down the street without getting raped and carved up -- fly out the window.  Too bad The American Conservative seems to share in this respectable consensus.