ANCWL’s chemical castration of rapists ‘unlikely to happen’

Legal experts say they do not see the chemical castration of those convicted of rape, as proposed by the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL), happening anytime soon in South Africa.

The ANC Women’s League were very vocal on Tuesday at the High Court in Pretoria, while attending the case of a man accused of raping a seven-year-old girl at the Dros restauant in Pretoria.

The league’s secretary-general Meokgo Matuba said the current law was not an adequate deterrent for rapists and that they were serious about their proposal for chemical castration to be imposed on sex offenders.

In a statement, the league said they were planning on mobilising women across the country and internationally to get their point across.

Legal expert Andrew Boerner said although it was possible due to section 36 of the constitution – that allowed for the limitation of a person’s rights after being convicted – it was hard to imagine it happening in a country like South Africa, where laws protect citizens from physical punishment like corporal punishment.

Despite this, Boerner said a deterrent was needed to deal with sexual abuse in the country, and commended the league for finding one that would make for a good debate in finding solutions to the problem of sexual abuse “because the current laws were clearly not effective enough”.

Another legal expert Lisa Vetten said it was virtually impossible to implement chemical castration now as it was unconstitutional and would have to go through a law-reform process where lawmakers would have to decide whether it was constitutional to include in the South African context.

Vetten said she didn’t think the league would have a strong enough argument to justify the implementation of the proposed chemical castration.

She added that she didn’t feel it would be the solution to dealing with sex offenders because there was very little evidence that proved it had any effect on the offender in other countries like Poland, South Korea, Russia, and Australia where it has been implemented.

“We have to be careful about how much we turn to chemical castration as a solution, because we have to look at what message this sends,” says Vetten.

“By its overuse we’re saying the reason for sex abuse is because of the male hormone, as opposed to it being as a result of attitudes, norms and society.

“We should rather focus and put more energy on the criminal justice system, because there are very few rapists that are being convicted. We should put more effort in making sure our sex offender register works.”

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