It is true, a woman is raped every 26 seconds in South Africa. That adds up to more than 3 000 a day. I am sure you are capable of the maths so I won't bore you with the obvious. To be honest though, these statistics are based on reported cases only. The cases daily of rapes that go unreported are as devastating as those that are. Many rapes occur within families and are never reported.

Charlize Theron famously headed the anti-rape campaign in South Africa, but the backlash was so great it faced court proceedings and lawsuits from fundamentalist male groups. Dear Charlize refused to renounce her actions and furthermore insisted that at a later stage she intended to further her activity in this field. As most would already know, Charlize saw a great deal of abuse in her own home which led to the slaying of her father by her own mother. She is not blinded towards the realities of womanhood in South Africa or in Africa for that matter. Amidst the uproar, the campaign was banned from airing, but later, after considerable efforts to prevent it from being shown, it was re-aired.

Some men were disappointed that Charlize should infer that all South African men are rapists, yet her argument is that no, real men are not, therefore absolving them from the cast of rapists. Yet looking at the statistics it is difficult not to presume that most men are, considering that she herself has intimated that South African men's attitudes to women are disgraceful. Indeed they are. The old dominating attitude is all but faded in the New South Africa.

Two weeks ago in the small town I visit occasionally, I was met with the same grief the whole issue of rape instills in me. A woman had been taking a mini-bus taxi to her work, when she began screaming to the driver to stop the vehicle, he wouldn't. She began shouting hysterically at the public in the streets to stop the bus. When no help came she threw herself from the moving vehicle and died in the road. Civilians surrounded the vehicle but the driver eventually escaped. They had tried to rape her in the back of the taxi. Two Tstotsi's as a bystander recalled. She was the only breadwinner for her family, with a child and crippled husband.

At what stage does a woman feel so threatened that she would sooner die in the streets than be subjected to the indignity and degradation of rape. It is her right to travel in peace. To the horror of the town, the proximity of such actions is without a doubt the most terrifying obstacle we face simply getting from one place to the next. I had never been a particular supporter of feminism, but it has to be said that at times the actions of men are beyond explanation. I don't want to live in fear because I am a woman. No woman does.

In predominantly black communities public rape is the source of casualty, in white communities the rapists are quite often hushed up because of the moral codes that define our society. I am not sure what is worse. The other issue here is that of rape by boyfriends and family members. It seems that someone's boyfriend immediately has some untold right to the body of their partner and reports of rape and sexual abuse are swept under the proverbial carpet because such cases are not seen as rape. Believe me, they are.

A BBC news report states the following : "Two men are due to appear at a court in Johannesburg on Tuesday, accused of raping a five-month-old girl who was discovered covered in blood and in tears.

It is the latest in a series of rapes of baby girls - some of them involving children less than one year-old, which has left South Africans reeling with horror." [1]

Sadly, while it shocked the world, it didn't come as much of a surprise to the citizens of South Africa. This is over and above the women that are raped every 26 seconds. As a woman I am more and more disgusted by the way the so-called nurturers and child-bearers of the word are being treated. And I would have to agree with Charlize Theron here, if you rape...you are not a man.

[1] BBC News Africa - Barnaby Phillips, 11 December 2001. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1703595.stm)

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