{UAH} Rape is the sport of societies in which the weak are fair prey for the powerful - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
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Rape is the sport of societies in which the weak are fair prey for the powerful - Comment
The crime of rape, defined in Common Law jurisdictions as the forcible sexual penetration of one person by another against the will of the person thus penetrated, has once again been hitting headlines across the world, and some of the reasons given for this savage and abhorrent practice are quite strange.
This time round, two news items drew my attention, one from India and the other from Zimbabwe. In India, which has really earned itself a hideous name in the business with the recent series of gang rapes, a woman was raped by a platoon of men authorised by tribal elders to chastise her for falling in love outside her tribe.
In South Africa, they have given it the frightening name of "correctional rape," usually reserved for lesbians.
In the terribly sick logic of that tribal diktat, that rape was a sentence executed by agents of a cultural order, and there seems to be very little that can be done to change that shameful reality without a total overhaul of the mindset of such a society.
In this we get an object lesson in underdevelopment, which can place side by side phenomenal economic and technological progress with the most backward cultural practices.
Were it the norm that the rise in productivity and IT savvy went hand in hand with civilised behaviour all round, India would soon become a developed country, but for now it must remain firmly amidst us the underdeveloping. Unless, that is, a massive movement for moral reawakening develops and takes up the task of the moral education of men and society.
The story from Zimbabwe was different. It was about a man who was sentenced to 290 years in prison after he went on a rampage of rape, violating some 21 women over a period of two years. What is significant here is the appropriate severity of the sentence.
It is to be hoped that the 290 years will cover this man's natural life, so that if he's going to be involved in any rape again it should be in gaol, where he is most likely to be the weaker party, with consequences. It would be just deserts.
Though rape is most commonly perpetrated against women — which means the perpetrators are usually men — these latter too have been victims of rape. We know the stories of what happens in spaces with large male populations, such as in gaols, public schools and the military.
Still, it is fair to say that the vast majority of rapists' targets are the females of the species. This means that whoever intends to rid their community of the scourge of rape must do it in the context of the larger efforts aimed at empowering women and ending all forms of discrimination and subjugation.
Women are subjected to these acts of humiliation because in many of our unjust societies they are perceived as the weaker sex, and since unjust societies must have perpetrators and victims, the weaker members of such societies must bear that brunt: The women, the children, the disabled, the poor, the ignorant, the unconnected.
In a climate of injustice and unfairness, the weak are fair prey for the powerful because that is what oils the rotten system.
The powerful politician lords it over his cowering underlings and personalises the central bank and the national treasury; the poorly paid police constable finds his victim in the little man who broke the law and from whom he can extract a bribe; the poor man thus treated goes back home and kicks his women, children and pets.
This type of power relationship can have interesting ramifications. We have been experiencing a spate of incidents of people rushing to the scene of an accident, not to help the victims but to rob them. At that point, those wounded or dead are weak and vulnerable and therefore exploitable.
So, to tackle the scourge of rape, societies must wrestle with the issues of injustice, and place the victims of rape at the centre of societal struggles for equity, fairness and balance.
Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com
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