Child Abuse - What is it

CHILD RAPE & ABUSE
SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN SOUTH AFRICAN SOCIETY
The sexual violence that has infiltrated South African schools is prevalent in South African society at large. Human Rights Watch has previously investigated this problem in two reports: Violence Against Women in South Africa: State Response to Domestic Violence and Rape (1995), and South Africa: Violence Against Women and the Medico-Legal System (1997). Since our prior reports, the number of reported rapes in South Africa has risen dramatically, due perhaps both to increased reporting and to an actual increase in violence against women. The reported incidence of rape and attempted rape increased by 20 percent from 1994 to 1999-though there are serious concerns about the quality of the statistics.

South Africa reportedly has one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world. A 1996 comparison of South African crime ratios to those in over one hundred other countries revealed South Africa to be the leader in the incidence of murder, rape, robbery, and violent theft. In 1998, three out of ten women surveyed in the Southern Metropolitan region of Johannesburg reported that they had been victims of sexual violence in the previous year. Seventy-seven percent of women described sexual violence as “very common” in their areas. Sixty-eight percent of women said they had been subjected to some form of sexual harassment at work or school at some point in their lives. One in four young men questioned reported having had sex with a woman without her consent by the time he had reached eighteen.
According to the most recently available South African Police Service statistics, there were 51,249 cases of rape reported to police nationally in 1999. According to the South African police, rape continues to be one of the most under-reported crimes, and therefore unpunished. Rape ranks last on the list of South African crimes in terms of conviction rates. A considerable percentage of cases are withdrawn before they reach court or during court proceedings. There is a significant backlog of cases in the justice system with some rape cases taking as long as two years to be finalized. Trials for child victims regularly take longer than trials with adult victims and witnesses.

The prevalence of rape and violence against women in South Africa remains highly contested. President Thabo Mbeki has criticized the country’s rape statistics as inflated and “purely speculative.” South African women’s rights groups counter that the magnitude of the problem cannot be reflected solely in statistics and warn against creating a debate centered around the accuracy of numbers.²⁶ At this writing, Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete and National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi have ordered a moratorium on the release of government crime statistics on the ground that compilation of the statistics requires reassessment.

Sexual Violence Against Girls

According to a 1997 South African government report, rape and sexual abuse of children are increasing rapidly and are matters of grave concern. From 1996 to 1998, girls aged seventeen and under constituted approximately 40 percent of reported rape and attempted rape victims nationally. Twenty percent of young women surveyed in southern Johannesburg reported a history of sexual abuse by the age of eighteen. Another recent study investigating sexual violence suggests that there has been a steady increase in the proportion of women reporting having been raped before age fifteen.

According to 1998 figures from the South African Police Service (SAPS) Child Protection Unit and the Victims of Crime Survey from 1999, rape is the most prevalent reported crime against children, accounting for one-third of all serious offenses against children reported between 1996 and 1998. According to a SAPS statistical analysis of reported rape cases, the victim age group reflecting the highest rape ratio per 100,000 of the female population is the category of twelve to seventeen-year-old girls, with 471.7 cases. The age category of zero to eleven years of age reflected a ratio of 130.1 rapes per 100,000 of the female population.

Because those who commit acts of sexual violence can also be very young,girls may have real reason to fear the threats and taunts of their classmates. The SAPS reportedly has seen increases in the number of children being arrested for acts of sexual violence. In Mitchell’s Plain, a township community in the Western Cape, up to 40 percent of the 950 sexual violence cases recorded in 1999 were reportedly committed by children. A prosecutor in Durban told Human Rights Watch: “I’m seeing many more younger and younger perpetrators-school aged kids.”

Some researchers attribute the increase in sexual violence against girls to a belief gaining credence in some communities that sexual intercourse with a young virgin can “cleanse” HIV-positive men or men with AIDS of the disease. Justice officials in KwaZulu-Natal, for example, are concerned that the myth may be fueling an increase in child rape cases. One prosecutor told Human Rights Watch:

The virgin rape myth is a major problem. I represent a lot of HIV-positive kids, they die. The kids often die before we are able to finish the prosecution of their abuser. We’re seeing younger and younger victims with an average age of six-guaranteed to be virgins. I am seeing more than one HIV-positive child a week. I can’t completely attribute all their HIV status to the virgin rape myth, because it could be that the mother was HIV-positive, but I do feel the myth is causing an increasing number of younger rape victims.

Some research suggests that child rape is also committed as a preventive measure to avoid contracting the virus from older women. In part, because they are believed to be HIV-free, younger women and girls have become increasingly attractive to older men as sexual partners, willing or unwilling. Because they are commonly believed to be less likely to be infected, very young girls run an increased risk of sexual harassment on their way to and from school. Girls have been abducted and sexually assaulted in route to school. This has led to isolated cases of such girls being withdrawn from school and to pressure from parents for schools to be built closer to their homes.

Human Rights Watch is concerned that the prevalence of the belief that sexual intercourse with virgins cures HIV/AIDS may pose a risk to young girls. Our interviews with child abuse activists and counselors indicate that the virgin myth is a real problem.

It is difficult to say where the myth about sex with a virgin will cure AIDS came from-some believe that it was from traditional healers. What we do know is that it causes enormous suffering to children who become the victims of this misinformation and we believe the myth should be actively targeted in the media and all HIV/AIDS education programs.

The director of Childline also believes her counselors are “certainly seeing young children who appear to have been the victims of [the myth]. They have been abused by adults and youths who are HIV-positive and ordinarily would not be sexually attracted to or active with children.” The director reported: “We know of township youths who specifically target virgin girls and separate them physically from their peer groups-for instance, when walking home from school-and gang rape them.”

At the same time that virgins are being targeted for sexual assault, Human Rights Watch received reports that virginity tests were being conducted at some schools in KwaZulu-Natal. Reportedly, at eight schools in Osizweni, local teachers administered tests to as many as 3,000 children and awarded certificates to students who passed. There are accounts of children as young as six being pressured to take part in virginity testing conducted by teachers in schools in Osizweni. At some schools in the area, testing reportedly is conducted every three months.

The practice of virginity testing of girls, predominantly in KwaZulu-Natal, has been lauded as a way to delay the sexual activity of youth and prevent the spread of HIV. Virginity testing as an HIV/AIDS prevention measure is overly invasive for girls. Virginity testing infringes on a girl child’s right to privacy, is gender discrimination, and violates the right to bodily integrity. Human Rights Watch maintains that schools are especially inappropriate sites for virginity testing. There is an implicit state endorsement when testing is conducted on school property or by school officials, and we urge an end to school testing, and encourage continued education about HIV/AIDS transmission to dispel the “virgin myth.”

Attitudes Towards Violence Against Women

Societal attitudes toward women and girls also contribute to a higher incidence of violence against them. According to a recent Gauteng area study, eight in ten young men believed women were responsible for causing sexual violence and three in ten thought women who were raped “asked for it.” Two in ten thought women enjoyed being raped. Among male youth who knew a woman who had been raped, 7 percent said they thought she must have enjoyed it and 24 percent thought she “asked for it.” Nearly half the males surveyed said they had sexually violent male friends. Three in ten men said they could be violent to a girl.

Nearly 50 percent of male youth said they believed a girl who said “no” to sex meant “yes.” Nearly a third of both men and women surveyed said forcing sex on someone you know is not sexual violence. Some girls even responded that they did not have the right not to be subjected to sexual violence. While the majority of men thought “jack-rolling” (“recreational” gang rape) was “bad,” young people between the ages of fifteen and nineteen years old were the most likely to say it was “good” or “just a game.” Eleven percent of fifteen-year-old male youth thought jack-rolling was “cool,” with a leap in male opinion in favor of jack-rolling between the ages of sixteen and seventeen.

Youth attitudes regarding violence against girls help perpetuate violence. To date, the education system has not been effective in changing attitudes or teaching students to control aggression; rather, schools are spaces where violence remains prevalent in part because it is not effectively challenged by school authorities.

School Reform, Conditions, and Structure

The South African government has placed great emphasis on the development of policies to redress the legacy of disparities and inequalities left by apartheid. Significant investments are being made in education. The South African Schools Act of 1996 and the National Education Policy Act of 1996 govern the administration of education in South Africa. The South African Schools Act repealed the many discriminatory education laws that existed under the apartheid education system, setting forth a new and nationally uniform education system for the nondiscriminatory organization, management, and financing of schools.

Similarly, the National Education Policy Act is aimed at “the advancement and protection of the fundamental rights of every person” to education as guaranteed in the constitution. The act empowers the national minister of education to determine national education policy in terms of the principles embodied in the constitution. The act provides an infrastructure that requires consultation with a wide variety of bodies before determining policy, including a body representative of the organized teaching profession, a national council of college rectors, a national council representative of students, and a national council representative of parents. The act ensures the publication and implementation of national education policy and also calls for the evaluation and monitoring of education in South Africa.

The government dismantled the pre-1994 education system, consolidating the eighteen segregated departments into one central department and nine provincial departments. The former Department of National Education has become the Department of Education, which coordinates education at the national level and is mainly responsible for policy formulation and monitoring of implementation.

The constitution vests substantial powers in provincial legislatures and governments to run education affairs subject to the national policy framework, and each province also has an education department. South African schools are governed by statutes enacted by the central and the provincial legislatures. Provincial statutes on education vary from province to province, but are essentially the same in that they provide a legal framework and basic legal principles for the provision, governance, and function of education.

The Council of Education Ministers (made up of the national minister of education and the provincial members of the executive councils (MECs) responsible for education), and the Heads of Education Departments Committee (made up of the top civil servants in the national and provincial departments) facilitate cooperation between the national and provincial structures to enable the departments to share information and advice and to collaborate on policy design and implementation. These structures are intended to provide a regular forum for administrative heads of education departments to consult and collaborate in the interests of the system as a whole.

School attendance is compulsory for South African children from the ages of seven to fifteen. The South African education system consists of four phases: junior and senior primary and junior and senior secondary. The junior primary phase includes the first three years of formal schooling, Grade A, Grade B, and Standard three for children aged six to eight. Standards four through six comprise senior primary for children aged nine to eleven. The primary school phase aims at developing basic skills of literacy and numeracy. The junior secondary phase, the seventh to ninth standards for children aged twelve to fourteen, bridges students from primary to secondary education with a broad-based curriculum. The senior secondary phase, the tenth to twelfth school years, prepares students aged fifteen to seventeen for the senior certificate or matriculation certificate examinations commonly known as “matric.”

South Africa’s education system is expanding. The 1996 Schools Register of Needs study recorded 27,276 schools in the country. The number of teachers has grown from 145,000 in 1976 to 375,000 in 1996. School enrollment has also grown, increasing from 10,099,214 in 1991 to 12,071,355 in 1998, representing an annual growth rate of 2.8 percent.

South African’s gross enrollment ratio in primary schools is 96.5 percent, though there are substantial differentials in gross enrollment by gender. The gross enrollment ratio is higher among males at 98.3 percent than among females at 86.3 percent. Gross enrollment gender disparities are more pronounced in some provinces, such as Northern Province and Mpumalanga. The average student-teacher ratio in South African public primary schools is thirty-five-each teacher is responsible for an average of thirty-five students. Student-to-teacher ratios also vary substantially by province.

Sixteen percent of children six to fourteen years of age are out-of-school, though they should be attending. Disparities in the proportions of out of school children vary by place of residence, population group, and gender. Proportions of out-of-school children are highest in the least developed and poorest provinces, with a non-attendance rate of 18.8 percent in the Eastern Cape, while the non-attendance rate is only 9.9 percent in the Western Cape.

Prevalence of out-of-school children also varies significantly by population group. It is highest among African children and lowest among Indians and Asians. Slightly more boys are out of school than girls. However, girls drop out of school earlier than boys, and children in rural areas tend to drop out earlier than those in urban areas.

The government has acknowledged, in its assessment submitted to the World Education for All Forum 2000, that the physical environment of many schools requires urgent attention. There is still a chronic shortage of classrooms in black schools and student-teacher ratios remain unacceptably high. Most South African primary and combined schools have no access to proper sanitation facilities. Nearly half of the schools use pit latrines that are often inadequate in number and may pose health hazards; 13.5 percent of schools have no sanitation facilities at all. The majority of primary and combined schools, 56 percent, have no electricity. Five percent of primary and combined schools have buildings deemed by the government not to be suitable for education, while another 12.5 percent have buildings that need urgent attention. The condition of buildings is poorest in the Northern Province and in KwaZulu-Natal, where 41 percent and 23 percent of the schools, respectively, either need urgent attention or are not suitable for teaching and learning. The government also reported that most schools lack adequate supplies of teaching and learning materials.

The general performance of South African primary school learners has been called “poor” by the government. The overall pass rate for the matriculation examination has dropped from 87 percent in 1979 to 48 percent in 1998. However, the number of students taking the exam has increased 548 percent over that period, with the number of secondary school graduates rising by 267 percent. Most of the students who took the 1999 matriculation examination were female, while most of those who passed were male. In each province, the pass rate was higher for males than females.

HIV/AIDS and Education

In addition to the challenges associated with school reform, the education system is faced with South Africa’s HIV/AIDS crisis. With a total of 4.2 million infected people, South Africa has the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS of any country in the world. The AIDS epidemic is having a massive impact in South Africa’s education sector, both on the demand for and supply of education.

Schools as Spaces for Violence

One of the most significant challenges to learning for many children is the threat of violence at school. South Africa’s written submission to the World Education for All Forum, an assessment of the state of education in the country, identified the possession of weapons by students, sexual abuse, the use of alcohol and drugs on school premises, and burglaries as having a debilitating effect on the morale of school managers, educators, and governing bodies.

Neither the national nor provincial departments of education systematically monitor incidents of violence in schools. Similarly, there are no data systems to facilitate the evaluation of crime statistics on the basis of where the crime was committed. While quantitative data on school violence is not available, the existing evidence, confirmed by Human Rights Watch’s own research, strongly suggests that violence-sexual or otherwise-is prevalent in many South African schools, undermining the ability of these schools to achieve their developmental and educational objectives.

School violence emanates from a variety of sources: Violence may be perpetrated by teachers, by students, and even by strangers to the school community. Teachers continue to inflict physical violence on their students in the form of corporal punishment. Although corporal punishment is illegal in South Africa, many teachers still see violence as an appropriate tool for child discipline and continue to physically assault children by caning, slapping, and beating them to maintain classroom discipline, or to punish poor academic performance or improper behavior.

High levels of racially motivated violence among students in formerly white, colored, and Indian schools that are being integrated have been reported. In a 1999 study of students in schools with high levels of racial diversity, 62 percent indicated that there had been a racial incident or racism in school, including derogatory and racial name-calling and various forms of racial harassment often resulting in physical altercations.

The insecurity of the school environment presents a situation in which children are routinely exposed to gang violence, rape, robbery, and assault. Gangs operate with impunity in some school environments, making “schools places where drugs, thugs and weapons can move as freely through the gates as pupils.” Turf wars between gang members do not just spill onto school grounds; rather, schools become territorial prizes because gangs need a controlled area from which to sell drugs and recruit members. Some schools are so destabilized by gangs that courses are not conducted according to any regular schedule. Teachers report that they sometime fear their own gang-affiliated pupils who carry weapons and smoke dagga. Intimidation by gangs can undermine all attempts at creating a culture of learning and teaching. Lack of school security is a problem in high crime areas. In many schools, teachers and students alike are frightened for their safety.