When you think of a 3-year old toddler, you think of bottles, dummies, just out of nappies, trotting around finding everything in the world new and exciting. But not in South Africa. In South Africa, the reality for these babies is that their childhoods are being brutally snatched away from them every day. Every day in this country that the government does nothing, rapists attack children and their lives change forever. Some may never be able to urinate or defecate properly again after their internal organs have been ripped apart. Babies are getting HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases before their lives have even begun.
You would think that years ago, when these statistics first shocked South Africans and nations around the world, that the government would have leaped into action and taken on board all the comments and suggestions made by medical research councils or international aid agencies. But instead, the opposite has occurred. Recommendations have been ignored, specialist police task teams disbanded and in every sense of the word victims who have been raped by one or many attackers, are raped again by the system that is supposed to protect them. There are the stories in the newspapers and then - who cares what happens later? Who follows up the story in court? Does the case even get to court? Who sees whether that child is able to grow and live, or whether the mother or grandmother can overcome her grief at the abuse of her child?
When Interpol states that South Africa has the highest rate of rapes in the world you might think that country was at war - savaged by a foreign army. But the war on children in this country is being waged by individuals or gangs of men who have felt empowered by lax government structures to do what they like with impunity.
It is not the criminals who are being punished in this country, it is the victims. Victims of rape are so badly treated that researchers from the Medical Research Council in Gauteng had to go for counselling themselves after what they had seen.
40 per cent of rape victims in South Africa are at risk of becoming HIV-positive if they do not receive post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). Yet not even this treatment is effectively provided for victims.
Aside from the inhumanity in not providing basic medication for victims, it is actually more cost effective for government to provide PEP than to treat HIV. Rape specialist, Dr Adrienne Wulfsohn, says the hospital costs of treating one rape survivor who contracts HIV is around R600 000 during her shortened life.
It is a shocking inditement of a country that 50 per cent of all court cases are for rape, according to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) except in Durban and Mdantsane, where it is 60 per cent.
And 75 per cent of rape in South Africa is gang rape.
Teenagers (girls and boys) who are supposed to be thinking of love as something romantic and idealistic also have their dreams shattered since 28 to 30 per cent report that their first sexual encounter was forced. Unfortunately there are many South African men who will just say the victim enjoyed it or asked for it.
International agencies like UNAids report that in South Africa two-and-a-half times more women are infected than men because many women experience forced sex.
Unicef reports that six times more girls than boys in Africa are infected with HIV. Children are infected with HIV whose mothers are not HIV-positive - so they could only have contracted the disease from rape.
Organisations who support rape victims in South Africa have been concerned for many years that the system has been giving criminals every advantage while victims do not see justice done.
Where is the future for children in this country? Too many government officials talk about cracking down on crime - and then turn around and say they want to legalise prostitution. All the statistics show that rape is not being effectively handled as a crime in South Africa. The country needs specialized police units to deal with rape and specialized care centres in hospitals to treat victims. But South Africa needed these years ago.
Right now, thousands of children are paying - with their lives - every day for the government's inability or unwillingness to protect them from violent crime.
Yours sincerely
INGELA RICHARDSON
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