Date: 10/12/2003
Source: National Council of Provinces (NCOP)
Title: Pandor: 16 Days of Activism: Wall of Solidarity breakfast event
SPEECH BY MS GN PANDOR, MP, AND CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP, AT THE WALL OF SOLIDARITY BREAKFAST EVENT, 10 December 2003
THE ROLE OF PARLIAMENT IN COMBATING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Parliament has advanced the position of women in three main areas: making the budget gender sensitive, protecting women from violence, and promoting equality.
I am here today to talk about what Parliament has done to protect women from violence and that also includes steps taken to promote equality between men and women, because protection from violence and promotion of equality are opposite sides of the same coin.
Sex and gender are deeply implicated in crimes of violence, given that certain crimes, such as rape and battery, target women as victims. For this reason, violence against women has a serious effect on sex and gender equality.
I want to focus, though, simply on domestic violence and rape.
Domestic Violence
The government has committed itself at an international level to addressing the problem of violence against women. Apart from its ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, it is bound by the unanimous resolution of the United Nations entitled the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The Beijing Platform for Action also identified the eradication of violence against women as one of the principal issues that needs to be addressed by governments in order for women to participate fully and equally in civil society.
Concern over the widespread abuse of women by men in South Africa led to the passage of critical pieces of legislation in Parliament, but the most important was the Domestic Violence Act (1998).
The Act marks a distinctive shift in South African law from denial of the existence of domestic violence to a legal definition that recognises women's experiences.
The Domestic Violence Acts enables anyone who has been abused to obtain an interdict at a magistrate's court with a suspensive warrant of arrest attached. Upon reporting violation of the terms of the interdict at a police station, he or she can trigger the arrest of the abuser who will be brought before a magistrate. The Act applies to anyone in a domestic relationship. It came into operation in December 1999.
The Domestic Violence Act was passed with the aim of affording victims of domestic violence the maximum protection from domestic abuse that the law can provide.
Rape
Parliament has also chosen to punish rape more severely than ever before. Under the Criminal Law Amendment Act (1997), a new regime of mandatory-minimum sentences for the violent crimes of murder, rape and robbery was put in place. The prescribed minimum sentence for 'ordinary' rape, for example, is ten years.
Rape is one of the most devastating personal traumas. Victims feel as if their lives have been shattered and that their psychological and physical privacy has been destroyed. The emotional scars can take months and sometimes years to heal.
Rape has always been a crime at common law, but in our constitutional culture, sexual violence is also an act of sex discrimination that deprives women of their civil rights.
So the high incidence of rape has a critical bearing on women's equality.
Women are not free in our society. Women are not free from fear.
Girls are not free from the fear of assault in the school and in the home.
On a daily basis in schools across the nation, girls of every race and economic class encounter sexual violence and harassment.
Discrimination against girls based on gender perpetuates the educational gap between boys and girls. This abuse has to stop.
The deeply buried beliefs and attitudes of men to women have to change.
There are two widespread myths about rape in our society.
Myth Number One: rape is committed by a small group of depraved and abnormal men. Wrong. A large class of normal boys and men commit rape.
Study after study has shown that men who rape are normal. But that does not mean that all men are rapists. It simply means that a tendency to rape is encouraged by an acceptance of gender inequality, the prevalence of pornography for men, and the degree of social disorganisation in a community.
Rape is culturally dictated and not culturally deviant.
Myth Number Two: women ask to be raped. Wrong. Women ask to be valued and loved.
Boys and men are taught that power, dominance and violence can be arousing to girls and women. And when boys are young and inexperienced, they do not understand communicative sexuality, sexual pleasure and intimacy.
Instead boys and men look on rape as a form of shoplifting. They think they can simply take sex. Survey after survey has shown that our girls learn that coerced sex is the norm. Men know taking sex is wrong, but there is a grey area between consent and coercion. And they think, it is not such a serious harm. It is like shoplifting.
When life is hard and you are not likely to be caught, our boys and men think, why not?
It has to stop. 'Real men do not rape'. Real men think rape is the equivalent of murder. Real men do not think rape is a form of shoplifting.
Rape and murder are similar harms and they carry similar punishments under our law. Yet boys and men do not see rape as the equivalent of murder. And until boys and men do, we will continue to see the levels of abuse of women and children that exist at the moment.
Conclusion
Law on its own cannot change behaviour. But it is a starting point. We can start to change behaviour by talking about problems and passing laws in Parliament.
Our sexual offences law is long overdue for an overhaul. We have learned from a mammoth review by the Law Commission. And now a new Sexual Offences Bill is being considered in Parliament. One of the issues that it tackles is a new definition of rape that will allow women to enter court as the accuser rather than the victim. Currently the curious requirement of a "lack of consent" on the part of the woman creates a particular form of inequality. It does not matter whether the complainant actually did not consent, but only whether the accused rapist knew that she did not consent. In our law 'mens rea' or intent must extend to every element of a criminal offence. Where the accused genuinely, though unreasonably, believes the complainant consented, he will not be convicted of rape.
This and many other issues are under review in the new Sex Offences Act currently before us in Parliament.
Issued by: National Council of Provinces
10 December 2003
Source: National Council of Provinces (NCOP)
Title: Pandor: 16 Days of Activism: Wall of Solidarity breakfast event
SPEECH BY MS GN PANDOR, MP, AND CHAIRPERSON OF THE NCOP, AT THE WALL OF SOLIDARITY BREAKFAST EVENT, 10 December 2003
THE ROLE OF PARLIAMENT IN COMBATING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Parliament has advanced the position of women in three main areas: making the budget gender sensitive, protecting women from violence, and promoting equality.
I am here today to talk about what Parliament has done to protect women from violence and that also includes steps taken to promote equality between men and women, because protection from violence and promotion of equality are opposite sides of the same coin.
Sex and gender are deeply implicated in crimes of violence, given that certain crimes, such as rape and battery, target women as victims. For this reason, violence against women has a serious effect on sex and gender equality.
I want to focus, though, simply on domestic violence and rape.
Domestic Violence
The government has committed itself at an international level to addressing the problem of violence against women. Apart from its ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, it is bound by the unanimous resolution of the United Nations entitled the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The Beijing Platform for Action also identified the eradication of violence against women as one of the principal issues that needs to be addressed by governments in order for women to participate fully and equally in civil society.
Concern over the widespread abuse of women by men in South Africa led to the passage of critical pieces of legislation in Parliament, but the most important was the Domestic Violence Act (1998).
The Act marks a distinctive shift in South African law from denial of the existence of domestic violence to a legal definition that recognises women's experiences.
The Domestic Violence Acts enables anyone who has been abused to obtain an interdict at a magistrate's court with a suspensive warrant of arrest attached. Upon reporting violation of the terms of the interdict at a police station, he or she can trigger the arrest of the abuser who will be brought before a magistrate. The Act applies to anyone in a domestic relationship. It came into operation in December 1999.
The Domestic Violence Act was passed with the aim of affording victims of domestic violence the maximum protection from domestic abuse that the law can provide.
Rape
Parliament has also chosen to punish rape more severely than ever before. Under the Criminal Law Amendment Act (1997), a new regime of mandatory-minimum sentences for the violent crimes of murder, rape and robbery was put in place. The prescribed minimum sentence for 'ordinary' rape, for example, is ten years.
Rape is one of the most devastating personal traumas. Victims feel as if their lives have been shattered and that their psychological and physical privacy has been destroyed. The emotional scars can take months and sometimes years to heal.
Rape has always been a crime at common law, but in our constitutional culture, sexual violence is also an act of sex discrimination that deprives women of their civil rights.
So the high incidence of rape has a critical bearing on women's equality.
Women are not free in our society. Women are not free from fear.
Girls are not free from the fear of assault in the school and in the home.
On a daily basis in schools across the nation, girls of every race and economic class encounter sexual violence and harassment.
Discrimination against girls based on gender perpetuates the educational gap between boys and girls. This abuse has to stop.
The deeply buried beliefs and attitudes of men to women have to change.
There are two widespread myths about rape in our society.
Myth Number One: rape is committed by a small group of depraved and abnormal men. Wrong. A large class of normal boys and men commit rape.
Study after study has shown that men who rape are normal. But that does not mean that all men are rapists. It simply means that a tendency to rape is encouraged by an acceptance of gender inequality, the prevalence of pornography for men, and the degree of social disorganisation in a community.
Rape is culturally dictated and not culturally deviant.
Myth Number Two: women ask to be raped. Wrong. Women ask to be valued and loved.
Boys and men are taught that power, dominance and violence can be arousing to girls and women. And when boys are young and inexperienced, they do not understand communicative sexuality, sexual pleasure and intimacy.
Instead boys and men look on rape as a form of shoplifting. They think they can simply take sex. Survey after survey has shown that our girls learn that coerced sex is the norm. Men know taking sex is wrong, but there is a grey area between consent and coercion. And they think, it is not such a serious harm. It is like shoplifting.
When life is hard and you are not likely to be caught, our boys and men think, why not?
It has to stop. 'Real men do not rape'. Real men think rape is the equivalent of murder. Real men do not think rape is a form of shoplifting.
Rape and murder are similar harms and they carry similar punishments under our law. Yet boys and men do not see rape as the equivalent of murder. And until boys and men do, we will continue to see the levels of abuse of women and children that exist at the moment.
Conclusion
Law on its own cannot change behaviour. But it is a starting point. We can start to change behaviour by talking about problems and passing laws in Parliament.
Our sexual offences law is long overdue for an overhaul. We have learned from a mammoth review by the Law Commission. And now a new Sexual Offences Bill is being considered in Parliament. One of the issues that it tackles is a new definition of rape that will allow women to enter court as the accuser rather than the victim. Currently the curious requirement of a "lack of consent" on the part of the woman creates a particular form of inequality. It does not matter whether the complainant actually did not consent, but only whether the accused rapist knew that she did not consent. In our law 'mens rea' or intent must extend to every element of a criminal offence. Where the accused genuinely, though unreasonably, believes the complainant consented, he will not be convicted of rape.
This and many other issues are under review in the new Sex Offences Act currently before us in Parliament.
Issued by: National Council of Provinces
10 December 2003
Advertisement
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE SAVE THIS ARTICLE FEEDBACK
To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here
