Break the bystander effect
Don’t keep quiet: there are many ways to act against sexual misconduct that you witness, writes BANATHI MGQOBOKA
The act of bystanding during occurrences of sexual misconduct towards women and girls is a deeply problematic social issue. Acts of sexual misconduct which imply harassment, violence, assault or abuse are at a growing in South Africa. Between January and March of 2021, 12 133 sexual offence cases were reported as reflected in the fourth quarter 2020/2021 South African Police Service (SAPS) Crime Statistics. Within this tracking, the Eastern Cape alone recorded 2 024 cases. These sexual offence cases are explained by the SAPS to include rape, sexual assault, attempted sexual offences and contact sexual offences. Such sexual doings are not consented to and they frequently make a victim feel uncomfortable, afraid and vulnerable.
First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
Between December 2020 and 3 March 2021, 10 South African men were sentenced to life imprisonment for rape.
Those men removed from society include a 37-year-old uncle who raped his 10-year-old niece, a 44-year-old man who raped his 14-year-old stepdaughter, a man who raped a nine-year-old and an 11-year-old after luring them into his home, as well as two serial rapists who kidnapped their victims, held them hostage and raped them.
Although this might seem like a drop in the ocean in a country that lives with a seemingly permanent “second plague” of gender-based violence (GBV), the sentences by courts across the country are a moment for pause and faint optimism.
Why are established trade unions comfortable with the status quo and threatened by the rise of Saftu?
The history of South Africa is a history of class, race and gender struggle.
The history written by the colonisers claims that diamonds were discovered in 1867 near the Orange River and gold in 1886 at the Transvaal farm Langlaagte.
This was a period following the near defeat of our people by the invading army of white colonialists who were now plundering the land from topsoil down to its bowels, in search of wealth.
But then they clashed among themselves immediately after these great discoveries, leading to two Anglo-Boer wars, in 1880-81 and 1899-1902. Eventually they settled by creating the Union of South Africa in 1910, which gained its full independence in May 1961.
The history of South Africa is a history of class, race and gender struggle.
The history written by the colonisers claims that diamonds were discovered in 1867 near the Orange River and gold in 1886 at the Transvaal farm Langlaagte.
This was a period following the near defeat of our people by the invading army of white colonialists who were now plundering the land from topsoil down to its bowels, in search of wealth.
But then they clashed among themselves immediately after these great discoveries, leading to two Anglo-Boer wars, in 1880-81 and 1899-1902. Eventually they settled by creating the Union of South Africa in 1910, which gained its full independence in May 1961.