SPEECH BY DEPUTY MINISTER AT THE LAUNCH OF THE SEXUAL OFFENCES COURTS TRAINING PROJECT

DATE: 25 OCTOBER 1999

VENUE: SA LAW COMMISSION, PTA

Thank you, for introducing me, Patricia.
Good morning everyone.

Your Excellency, Mrs Lucie Edwards, the High Commissioner of Canada,
Mr Vusi Pikoli, Acting Director-General of the Department of Justice,
Mr Bulelani Ngcuka, the National Director of Public Prosecutions,
Members of Staff of:
the Canadian High Commission,
the Department of Justice and
the Directorate of Public Prosecutions
Representatives from NGO's and from the business sector
Members of the Media
Ladies and Gentlemen

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all here today.

It gives me special pleasure to welcome Mrs Lucie Edwards to South Africa, as the new Canadian High Commissioner. Of course, Mrs Edwards is not new to South Africa. In fact as South Africa is concerned, she is actually a seasoned campaigner.

For those of you who are not familiar with Mrs Edwards' career, let me tell you that she served as Counsellor in the Canadian Embassy in Pretoria from 1986 to 1989. During this time she was responsible for the mission's work on human rights, democratic development and support for the anti-apartheid movement. Those were dark and difficult years, and I salute the walk that you walked with us.

Then, as Chair of the South Africa Task Force from 1989 to 1992, Mrs Edwards not only contributed to South Africa's peaceful transition to democracy, but also co-ordinated Canada's role in Namibia's transition to independence.

Now it is with great joy and pride that we welcome you to our bright, relatively new, but nevertheless, fully-fledged democracy.

Mrs Edwards, you have clearly shown yourself to be a true and enduring friend to South Africa, as well as a strong and courageous one. I thank you for all that you, and all that the Canadian government and its employees have already done in South Africa.

And now, I must thank you yet again, for your willingness to join us on the road of yet another struggle. The struggle to end violence, especially sexual violence, in South Africa.

Violence and especially sexual violence against women and children, is now one of the most pervasive evils in our society. Most of you will have heard the statistics. Even so, I'm going to repeat some of them here, so that the real shape and size of the evil that we are facing enters this room and provides the sombre background to this important occasion.

A women is raped every 17 seconds in South Africa, according to the South African Police. This statistic does not include the numbers of children who are raped.

It is estimated that one in every two yet, one in every two women in South Africa will be raped in her lifetime.

28 - 30% of adolescents in South Africa report that their first sexual encounter was forced.

16% of our South African men interviewed in a recent study, who knew somebody who had been raped, believed that the rape survivor had "enjoyed" the experience and had "asked for it".

Police estimate that only one in 36 rapes is reported in South Africa. And, of the rapes that are reported, only 15% culminate in a conviction.

Clearly, something is wrong. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.

And the horror, for truly, it is horror - the horror does not end there.

Psychologists and people in NGO's who work with rape survivors and abused women and children have been saying, for years now, that one of the reasons that this culture of sexual violence against women and children has gone virtually unchecked, lies in the very systems that are supposed to protect and support the victims, or survivors of crimes. And the most significant of these is the criminal justice system.

The simple fact is that if survivors of sexual offences, whether they are women, or children represented by their parents or guardians, decide to report what was done to them, they come into contact with various arms of the criminal justice system such as the police, the district surgeons or forensic nurses, the court prosecutors, court interpreters and magistrates or judges.

The process of interacting with these systems and officials can be extremely traumatic, especially when survivors are treated with suspicion, antagonism, and insensitivity. When they are treated as objects, or parts of a process, rather than as dignified human beings who are in a crisis that is not of their own making.

This kind of treatment exacerbates the survivors' feelings of powerlessness and violation. In fact, it mirrors the very feelings that they have experienced during the rape attacks. They are thus victimised not once, but twice. Once by the perpetrators of crimes, and a second time, by the systems that they are supposed to trust, for their support and protection. A double betrayal.

And the second betrayal is, in essence, even more shameful than the fist, because we have control over the second. We can, and must control the way that the justice system works in our country. And to do so is not a matter of choice: it is our constitutional obligation. It is a legal duty.

Aside from the rights to equality and dignity and the explicit rights of children, that form part of the backbone of our Constitution, and aside from the rights to freedom of movement and association and the right to health care and social security, all of which impinge upon the issue of sexual offences committed against women and children, there are two rights that I need to emphasise especially in this regard.

The first is the right to freedom and security of the person. This includes the right to be free from all forms of violence, from either private of public sources. It also states that everyone has the right to bodily and psychological integrity.

Implicitly this includes the right to security in and control over, the one's body, and security in and control over their psychological and emotional well-being.

The implications in this right, for people working in the justice system, should be clear to everyone in this room.

The second right that I want to highlight, is the right of access to courts. At first glace, this seems simple enough. No one is prevented from accessing the courts in South Africa any more. Or are they? It depends entirely on what you mean by access. The doors of the courts are indeed open. But what lies behind those doors?

If the court building and fixtures are intimidating, is there really access?

If the complainant has to sit in the passage, opposite the alleged perpetrator and his friends and family, can we speak of access?

If the court procedures are incomprehensible, is there really access?

If the court personnel are rushed and ill-prepared to handle such sensitive matters, is there really access?

If the complainant has to try to tell her story over and over again to people who are not entirely sure what they should be listening for, is there access?

If the magistrate or judge believes that women enjoy rape or ask for it, or that "no" from a woman really means yes, or that rape is okay as long as you keep it in the family, is there really access?

I don't think so. Truly, I don't think so.

And that is what brings us here today. The Ministry of Justice, together with the Department of Justice and the NDPP, have committed ourselves to making access to justice a reality for the thousands of women and children who are the survivors of sexual offences. And, once the legal definition of rape is changed, for men as well.

Our commitment is serious. We have already put the physical infrastructure in place for an additional of 20 new specialised sexual offences courts. They will be opened in all 9 provinces over the next year. They will have special waiting rooms for complainants so that they do not have to sit in corridors, opposite their alleged attackers. They will have one way glass and audio-visual equipment to help children to give their evidence in the least traumatic way. There will be prosecutors on hand who will have the time to listen to the stories and to prepare their cases properly.

One of the greatest needs in preventing the secondary victimisation of survivors of sexual offences, is training for all personnel in the criminal justice system, including police, health workers, social workers, prosecutors and interpreters.

The Canadian Government, through CIDA, has generously made money available to us to fulfill our commitment to true access, by ensuring that all the personnel, from all sectors of the justice system I've just mentioned, will receive the best training available. Again, to the government of Canada, as represented by Mrs Lucie Edwards, we say thank you. Your financial help will contribute to the realisation of our dream for a truly democratic and violence-free South Africa.

During the struggle years, we used an expression to indicate our commitment to the ongoing struggle for freedom and democracy. We used to say: Aluta Continua! May the struggle continue.

We may have won our political freedom and our democracy, but, in a very real sense South Africa is still imprisoned. It is imprisoned by the unacceptably high levels of violence, particularly sexual violence against women and children. As long as women and children live in fear for their lives and fear for their physical and psychological integrity, as a nation, we are not really free.

So, I say to you today, let us fight this great evil with everything that we have in us. Aluta Continua!!

Thank you.