Men's responses

The South African Men’s Forum was established in 1996-97 by Bafana Khumalo to mobilise and galvanise men against the abuse of women and children. Its membership now includes more than six thousand men and it runs workshops, seminars and public demonstrations.

It’s spokesman says, ‘It’s not only a South African issue, it’s a worldwide phenomenon. The sooner all men realise the importance of their involvement, the better.’

Bongani firmly believes that men who rape do so because they lack respect for themselves and don’t have a moral code by which they abide.

‘For me, it’s just a deliberate act of destroying a woman… They cite many lousy reasons [for raping] but I mean all the lousy reasons that they cite do not really make sense, you see that it’s just a strategy to escape the reality that they are animals, they are lunatics.’

Bongani does not believe that the dark years of apartheid can be used as a justification for sexual assault.

‘Some of them would also sometimes say that apartheid has taken so much of black men’s pride… you know they’ve been ridiculed, our men have been ridiculed for too long and then they need a soft target, a scapegoat to take out that anger and women always turn out to be that easy target. And then you know by raping you get the power that you never ever had. So I mean they give their different reasons but I still feel that it takes a man with low self esteem, with no morals to rape. It’s disgusting.’

‘Let us not use any excuses to say, "No, we are traumatised. We’ve been treated badly by apartheid, now let’s take advantage of that and do it to other people.” I mean it’s not fair; it’s abnormal; it’s not even African; it’s against Ubuntu. You know in our culture a man is supposed to be a figure of authority, the leader, the protector. You have to look after your family - women, the children, and not just the women that are close to you. Even the people in the broader community. So now what happens if this protector then abuses his protection powers to rape. It’s breaking our tradition as well so it’s not acceptable."

Charlene Smith says, "Very often in South Africa they tie up the men and they rape the woman next to him. It profoundly emasculates them because you get men who sit together and they say, 'Anyone touches my wife, girlfriend, daughter, sister, etcetera, I’ll kill the bastard' and after the woman is raped or the child is raped they realise there’s nothing they can do, that the police investigation is going nowhere, that no one can find the rapist or rapists, there’s nothing they can do. And if they find them in the end, they have to sit in Court, they have to listen to the testimony of their wife or child and for the first time really hear how she suffered, because most of us won’t tell all the detail except when it comes to Court, and they feel a profound sense of emasculation."

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