JOHANNESBURG — The public outcry in India over the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a New Delhi bus has prompted soul-searching in South Africa, where some people are asking: "Why not here?" In the seven weeks since the trainee physiotherapist was raped, assaulted with a metal bar and thrown bleeding onto a highway to die, nearly 9,000 women and children will have been sexually violated in South Africa. In one recent case in the capital Pretoria, five men dragged a 21-year-old woman into the bushes and took turns to rape her as she walked with friends at dawn to secure a spot in a university enrollment queue. Nearly four weeks on, police have made no arrests. Violence against women is also endemic in India, but the brutality of the recent attack shocked even those inured to the rising wave of sexual crimes and prompted thousands of protesters into the streets. The Indian cabinet has since fast-tracked tougher new penalties for sex crimes. In South Africa, such cases barely make a stir. In a country long known as the "rape capital of the world", women's rights campaigners say sexual violence has almost lost the power to shock. "We are not the only country faced with crime, sexism, patriarchal attitudes and poverty. But we seem to be the only country that goes to sleep when a rape happens," popular radio presenter Redi Tlhabi wrote. Comparing data across countries is difficult because of varying reporting requirements, but by any measure South Africa's sexual assault rate is off the charts. Its statistics agency concluded in 2000 that it had the highest reported rape rate of all 120 Interpol member countries. "We're still dealing with a patriarchal society, where men see themselves as privileged and doing anything they can get away with, and that includes raping" said Rachel Jewkes, acting president of the Medical Research Council (MRC). In the year to April 2012, more than 64,000 sexual offenses, including rape, were reported in South Africa, which has a population of 50 million people. Of these, more than 25,000 were assaults on children. The figures could be much higher as research suggests only a fraction of rapes are reported given that the police force is seen as unsympathetic to victims. Even when suspects are caught, only 12 percent of cases end in conviction. Rape became front page news last year when seven men aged between 14 and 20 went on trial on charges of raping a mentally handicapped 17-year old girl and recording it on a cell-phone video that later went viral. But even that incident did not spur anything like the kind of public protest seen in India. "If the gang rape of a mentally handicapped 17-year-old failed to get thousands on the streets in protest, what will?" columnist Rachel Davis asked in January in the online publication Daily Maverick. Last month police in North West province arrested a 43-year-old man for raping his 10-month-old niece while the baby's mother was at work. "A lot of police believe rape victims are responsible for their own rape," said Gareth Newham, head of the Crime and Justice Program at the Institute for Security Studies based in Pretoria. "They must have been wearing provocative clothing or been in a dark area when they shouldn't have been. They blame the victim a lot." According to Johannesburg businesswoman Andisiwe Kawa, who has given up on the justice system after she was gang raped by five men in 2010, "We have a constitution that promises us the right to safety and security and justice but in reality we don't have those," she said. "We have this nice, world-class legislation but it is not implemented for the people on the ground who require it. It is useless legislation." — Reuters
