The submerged part of the iceberg
Faced with such figures, difficult for the country of Nelson Mandela to highlight any progress during the day of March 8. Unlike previous days of reflection on women’s rights, this year, gender-based violence was not discussed in public debates. Beyond the high news linked to the coronavirus pandemic, the malaise is strong in South African society when President Cyril Ramaphosa launched - or sooner he pledged to tackle head on - problematic without the first results being visible yet. What exactly are these measures and can they really respond to a scourge that seems to stem from the culture of rape in the popular imagination ? What if sexual violence against women had something to do with the ghosts of South Africa’s political past ?

A past that forged the notion of masculinity
It must be said at the outset : gender-based violence is the consequence of endemic violence that has characterized South Africa since the colonial period. Indeed, Pumta Gqola, the author of the book Rape : The South African Nightmare (Rape : A South African Nightmare), explains the rise in statistics on rape after 1994 by the fact that black women were able , too, file a complaint. Before, rape was not only an essential characteristic of British colonial domination, but its acceptance in the minds was done through a general infantilization of black populations. "Under colonialism and apartheid, adult Africans were designated, boys and girls, legally and economically infantilized," writes Gqola. "Affirming your masculinity was then a way to reject this position," which explains why women found themselves trapped between two extreme conceptions of masculinity. On the other hand, "under apartheid, no white man was hanged for rape and the only black men who were hanged for rape were found guilty of raping white women," says Pumta Gqola. As a result, violence and assault against black women has rarely been condemned. And these women also did not have access to the police, the police stations being hostile places for years afterwards. Women have played an important role in the fight against apartheid, they have been systematically persecuted, assaulted or raped. Thus, from generation to generation, women take the brunt of the brutal history of South Africa, where “hyper-masculinity” - that is to say, the affirmation of male power - negates the woman’s existence as a full being, even things. Today, the factors of violence are complex and cover the entire psychosocial range, from poverty and unemployment to intergenerational violence and childhood trauma. Two explosive Human Rights Watch reports published in 1995 and an Interpol report of 1996 ended up cementing this perception and giving South Africa the status of "rape capital of the world".

And now ?
Combating this national scourge means acting on two levels. Firstly, the fight against violence against women is above all an awareness that education and teaching are levers that help, in such a context of violence, to protect vulnerable populations, such as women, but also girls and children more generally. While violence, violent behavior is tolerated / learned in homes, in communities, as well as in schools, there is an urgent need to break this circle of violence among the youngest themselves, too often exposed to negation. of the woman. If nothing is done in education, South African society will continue to generate generations of violent individuals, including rapists-sexual predators. Violence is in fact the only means of expression and assertion of authority both in the public and in the private sphere. On the other hand, the state itself must implement public policies in favor of combating violence against women. It is in this context that the South African government, and more particularly President Cyril Ramaphosa, has announced a series of concrete measures to respond to the call from South African civil society to demand better protection of women in the country.

In accordance with what was announced during the joint sitting of Parliament in October 2019, an emergency action plan was implemented, starting in November. The increase of an additional 1.6 billion rand in financial resources, access to justice for victims and the strengthening of criminal justice in the area of ​​sexual offenses have become the heart of this system. The establishment of courts dedicated exclusively to sexual offenses, care centers and 24-hour call centers is also the high point in the fight against gender-based violence.

Justice ordered to act faster
Faced with the slowness of justice, the government declared a national emergency the processing of sexual crimes files with better delay and / or reopened. The South African police are both reinforced by new recruits and trained in better care for victims. Civil servants working with children, in particular, as well as people with disabilities are now subject to much more scrutiny based on the national sex offender registry. Finally, education, awareness and prevention campaigns on various media platforms have also been encouraged in this emergency action plan.

If, on paper, this succession of measures seems to go in the right direction, the financial resources made available to victims, and more particularly to survivors, are already generating some controversy, especially since at the highest peak of the ’State no statement was made on the management and the appointment of the administrators of this fund against gender-based violence. Consequently, the greatest fear of observers is that the State will again make the same mistakes as in the past by failing to put in place better coordination between the stakeholders acting to combat violence against women, by the state and civil society. The decisions taken by the government in a context of indignation both local but also international could ultimately be counterproductive as the challenge is great and requires better cooperation for the implementation of a public policy in favor of women , and more particularly victims, much more effective.

Although President Cyril Ramaphosa has demanded weekly reports on the implementation of the plan, for the moment, it still seems very difficult to measure the progress achieved, especially since its implementation must be accompanied by a change in mentality of the whole of South African society, which is far from being won as “hyper-masculinity” is deeply rooted in this country.

* Marianne Severin is a research associate at the laboratory for Africa in the world (LAM), Sciences Po Bordeaux.