Why women in SA remain easy targets

If you say even the most horrendous things often enough, the words will eventually lose their power to shock… and, sadly we wonder if that may not happen to all the finely expressed sentiments on Women’s Day yesterday.

President Cyril Ramaphosa produced some horrific figures about gender-based violence: 7% of women aged 18 years and older had experienced physical or sexual violence in the past 12 months.

That is, he said, 1.5 million women. Also, he quoted from the same Human Science Research Council report as finding that four percent of men surveyed admitted to having perpetrated physical violence against a woman in the preceding 12 months.

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The president is to be commended for calling a spade a spade: that it is the men in South Africa who must, in his words, “change their behaviour” and “change their attitudes”.

And, most worryingly about their behaviour and attitudes is the belief among some men that they are almost entitled, legally, to prey on girls.

A group called Save Our Girls has launched an action in a case in the High Court in Johannesburg seeking to end what it says are weak legal protections for young girls that effectively legalises paedophilia.

The group says the Sexual Offences and Related Matters Amendment Act defines a child as someone under the age of 18, but that age threshold drops to 12-16 when it comes to sexual offences.

Save Our Girls brought the case after vile social media postings on X by Zimbabwean journalist Rutendo Matinyarare, who was living in South Africa but has apparently fled back across the border.

His sick posts showed an unhealthy interest in young girls who might be considered minors, but who are still, according to the law, above the age of consent of 16.

The lawsuit, brought by a group headed by black women and assisted by black lawyers, points to the uncomfortable truth that paedophilia has an unfortunate history in African culture, with some African men believing that sex with young girls cures diseases, promotes longevity and makes their businesses profitable.

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Yet, abuse of women and girls is not limited to any one cultural or ethnic group in this country and is, ironically, what unites men across the boundaries of colour: many of them think women and girls are theirs for the taking.

And frankly it’s no good arguing that “not all men” are guilty… they may not be, but they become silent accomplices when they say nothing when the sleazy sexist jokes are aired and when their friends, fathers or brothers are guilty of abusing females.

Further, Ramaphosa raised another critical point about men not treating women as their equals.

Even the most pious, virtue-signalling men still cannot, in many cases, treat women in anything other than a patronising, condescending manner.

It doesn’t help, of course, that our society, despite its vast transformation politically and, to an extent economically since 1994, still remains patriarchal in nature.

Women are expected to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen… but even when they are tolerated in the workplace, they are paid less than their male counterparts.

Unless we tackle those fundamental problems in society, both structural and in behaviours and attitudes, South African women – and girls – will remain easy targets for paedophiles and abusers.

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