What does a five-year old living in South Africa need to know about sexual assault?
Sarah Leeper's final report from the field. Sarah is working with the Children's Rights Centre in Durban as a Hine Fellow, a collaboration between the foundation and the Lewis Hine Documentary Initiative.
Please note that reports from Hine Fellows published on this website constitute their own personal impressions and do not represent the official positions of their host organisation, the Bernard van Leer Foundation or the Lewis Hine Documentary Initiative.
What does a five-year old living in South Africa need to know about sexual assault? This is the issue that has provoked the most discussion as we finalise the content of the Living Positively Handbook, a workbook for children aged five and up who are living with HIV.
The book contains information and activities about health, illness, and treatment interspersed with the narratives and photographs of real children living with HIV, some of whom were infected horizontally (that is, not before or during birth). On one of these biography pages, a girl named Babalwa tells the story of her infection this way:
“When I was young I was staying with my mother. My father passed away and my mom got married to another guy. Then my uncle raped me and I became infected with HIV. I didn’t have any information about HIV at that time.”
In another section, all methods of transmission – including sexual assault – are illustrated and described clearly and frankly.
This has provoked a lot of controversy. Is this information frightening and age-inappropriate? Or would avoidance or euphemism about this real issue implicitly be supporting a culture of silence and denial?
The Living Positively Handbook is based on the premise that children do better, medically and psychologically, if they have the information to make sense of what is happening to them, and the vocabulary to communicate their experiences. Two years of fieldwork with HIV+ children and their families have brought us a little closer to answering the question: What messages do young people need to hear about rape, and why?
We came up with five.
1. You are not alone
South Africa is reported to have one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world. The scale of the problem is suggested by surveys in which nearly 30% of young women say that their first sexual experience was "forced by partner".
It is not uncommon for these rape victims to be very young. The myth that sex with a virgin can cure HIV has led many adult men to rape children and infants in hope of being cured.
While I was living at a group home for abandoned HIV+ children, part of my evening clinic responsibilities involved bathing Thembeka, age five. She was raped at the age of two by several men behind a shebeen (an informal tavern), who infected her with HIV and injured her internally so profoundly that she must now use an ostomy bag.
Thembeka supervised the daily wash-and-bag-change process with a practised eye and a commanding tone. "No, wash THERE. Give me the cloth. Like this. Tape's too loose. Do it again. That's better, see?"
Thembeka was only one of the dozen or so children I came to know who had been sexually assaulted before they learned to tie their shoes.
2. It's called "rape"
Many people were unsure about the use of the word "rape" in our children's book. Couldn't we say that the uncle "hurt" her or "infected" her instead?
But others were more pragmatic: "It is a reality and we cannot run away,” said one. “Our children must be able to name this thing that is happening to them."
Most children can't. Sex and violence are such taboo topics that even adults are not clear about the meaning of rape and what it constitutes.
In Lusikisiki, where I did fieldwork at clinics treating HIV+ children, the Treatment Action Campaign held a workshop to raise awareness about sexual violence in the community. Workshop leaders noted that by the end of the workshop "there were twice as many sexual assault survivors as when we had begun", as more and more women became aware that their experiences constituted rape and counted themselves among the survivors. Most hadn't known that it was possible to be "raped" by a partner, especially if he has paid lobola (bride-price).
3. It's not your fault, and we're on your side
In the vast majority of cases, children are raped by acquaintances or family members. As a result, there is an immense amount of pressure within the family to deny the rape, keep the matter private, or blame the child, especially if the accused is the primary breadwinner.
I observed the medical examination of an eight-year old girl who arrived at a clinic with genital warts. After repeatedly insisting that this condition had developed "spontaneously," her mother eventually grudgingly admitted that she was often raped by her stepfather.
"It is her own fault," her mother told us. "She is wearing these short skirts, dancing around. What must the men do?"
(This notion that girls wearing certain clothing are “asking for it” is often invoked. Before he was recently acquitted of rape charges - about which more below - the country's former deputy president, Jacob Zuma, argued on the witness stand that because his accuser was wearing a kanga, a long piece of cloth that can be wrapped into a knee-length dress, she was indicating her willingness to have sex with him.)
I learned later that the family eventually threw her out of the house altogether, and she was taken in by neighbors.
At the “Comfort Centre”, a clinic for sexual assault survivors in Umlazi Township, I sat in on an intake interview with a counselor, a ten-year old girl and her mother. The girl had been raped by an older brother, and the mother was hesitant to press charges.
"My son will kill himself if he is accused," the mother argued. The girl sat in a corner, fidgeting with the hem of her school skirt. The doctor sighed, and told the mother "It will continue. If you do nothing, it will continue.” The family left without filing a police report.
4. You are a survivor, and you have lots of life ahead
Babalwa's story, as included in the Living Positively Handbook, doesn't end with the rape, though it gets worse before it gets better. Her mother dies, her relatives abandon her, she grows very ill, but then she gets help:
“[The doctor said that] I must go to hospice and wait for my dying day, for my day of death. I was admitted to the Sisters of Mercy Home and stayed there, and they take good care of me. Before they sleep they come and pray for me. I started TB treatment, joined a support group. I went back to school. I joined TAC [Treatment Action Campaign].”
When Mr. Mandela visits Khayelitsha township, Babalwa is asked to greet him:
"[My clinic] asks me to speak with Mr. Mandela. I disclosed my status to him, and told him about how they treat me in my community. I was always telling myself I must not die until I meet Mr. Mandela and go in an airplane. Mr. Mandela gave me a big hug, like in all of my dreams.”
Maybe most remarkably of all, she builds a support network for herself:
“I stay with a family now, they treat me as their own, I call [the mother] Ma. I am taking AZT, 3TC, and Efavirenz at 8am and 8pm. At school, my groupmates always tell me that it is 8:00, I must take my medicines. At home my friend and Ma remind me. I have a boyfriend, he tells me he is serious, and I believe him. They are always shouting at him your girlfriend has AIDS! And he says no, she doesn’t have AIDS, she is HIV-positive. I love her, if she is HIV+ or not.”
The Living Positively Handbook is small and Babalwa's story is big – we can't fit everything in. But we will include enough of her narrative to show that life doesn't end with rape, doesn't end with HIV. We cannot know the future but maybe there's love there, maybe health, maybe a chance to ride in an airplane.
5. There is help and justice
The fifth message is one we cannot in good conscience include. There is no doubt that children need to hear it, but first it needs to be true.
Only 7% of reported rape cases are prosecuted successfully. Only an estimated one in nine of secual violence incidents are reported.
The trials themselves can be exercises in human rights violations. Children must tell and retell their stories to the doctor, the policeman, the lawyer, the courts.
Policemen who are friends with the accused have been known to accept a bribe to incorrectly document the child's statement. These "inconsistencies" between the police statement and the statement given to the doctor are then used as evidence against the child's case in court – he or she is "confused" or "telling lies."
Some situations are almost farcical. Children who stay in rural areas are offered official transportation to the court on the trial day. However, their accused is offered the same convenience, and if they're from the same area they end up riding to court together in the back of a police car.
The recent trial of Jacob Zuma has brought the issue into sharp focus. The former Deputy President of South Africa and head of the National AIDS Council was accused of raping an HIV-positive activist who was visiting him in his home.
Statements made by the Treatment Action Campaign during the Jacob Zuma trial speak for themselves:
- "Regrettably, the former Deputy President has failed to condemn violence and vilification of women carried out in the name of his defense by the Friends of Jacob Zuma."
- "Judge Van Der Merwe could have made a finding... without dehumanizing the complainant and resorting to patriarchal prejudices and stereotypes of women who allege rape as pathological."
- "We urge all survivors of rape not to allow the statements made during the course of this trial to deny their right to access justice." (This seems unlikely.)
Even these reactions do not fully convey how profoundly disturbing it was to turn on the TV or open the newspaper each day and see the latest outpourings of hate towards the accuser. Outside the courtroom, a group of mostly female Zuma supporters regularly burned huge photos of the complaintant, upon which were written her full name, while shouting "Burn this nondindwa (bitch)".
Her mother's home was ransacked. Twice. A woman entering the courthouse who resembled the accuser was stoned. The accuser herself has since been "relocated" overseas "indefinitely" for her safety.
On the day Zuma was acquitted, around mid-afternoon, the city erupted. We watched from our office windows as cars, buses and taxis blew their horns in celebration, people streamed out of buildings, ululating and singing, shop windows were broken, large groups stopped traffic to dance in the streets. I walked outside and was faced with women: women laughing, women giving praise and thanks, women leading groups of their sisters in freedom songs: “Zuma, Sikufuna uZuma!” – Zuma, we want you Zuma!
We know that the Living Positively Handbook cannot change minds overnight. We cannot protect child rape survivors from the corrupt courts, their own families, the general public, or others who wish to degrade them or do them harm.
We can only say: There's another way to see it. In the end, after many focus groups and feedback sessions with counselors, health care workers, teachers, parents, and CRC staff members, it was decided that we should include Babalwa's story and the other relevant information about sexual assault.
If we're lucky, maybe one of these messages will find a home in a child's mind, maybe one of these words will find a voice.