More than 1 in 3 men in Johannesburg, South Africa admit to rape in government study

[alexmst]

http://news.ca.msn.com/world/cp-article.aspx?cp-documentid=26511686

JOHANNESBURG - A new survey says more than one in three South African men admit to having committed rape.

A study led by the government-funded Medical Research Foundation says that in Gauteng province, home to South Africa's most populous city of Johannesburg, more than 37 per cent of men said they had raped a woman. Nearly 7 per cent of the 487 men surveyed said they had participated in a gang rape.

More than 51 per cent of the 511 women interviewed said they'd experienced violence from men, and 78 per cent of men said they'd committed violence against women.

A quarter of the women interviewed said they'd been raped, but the study says only one in 25 rapes are reported to police.

The group hopes to replicate the study across southern Africa.

 

[GotGusto]

What constitutes rape according to this survey?

 

[james t kirk]

South Africa is a tough place. Violent crime is a pasttime.

Don't ever kid yourselves, we are very very fortunate to live in Canada.

 

[alexmst]

What constitutes rape according to this survey?

The AP brief didn't say.

There was another study done in 2009 by the same group in Cape Town that was reported in Time magazine that said 25% of men there had committed rape:


South Africans received a horrifying measure of just how bad their country's rape crisis is with the release this week of a study in which more than a quarter of men admitted to having raped, and 46% of those said that they had raped more than once.

The study, conducted by South Africa's Medical Research Council, says men most likely to rape, the researchers found, were not the poorest, but those who had attained some level of education and income.


Researchers interviewed 1,738 men of all race groups, in both urban and rural settings in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, provinces marked by high rates of AIDS and poverty, and the men answered questions about rape and HIV using small handheld computers in order to guarantee anonymity. Of those admitting rape, 73% said that they had committed their first assault before the age of 20. According to the researchers, many of the study's participants appeared to see no problem with what they had done.

South Africa has one of the highest incidents of reported rape in the world. The most recent statistics show that 36,190 cases of rape were reported to the police between April and December 2007, though experts believe that number only accounts for one out of nine cases. But the number of rape cases that make it to court — let alone result in a conviction — are far fewer.

Gender advocates say that the 2006 rape trial of prominent politician Jacob Zuma was incredibly damaging to their cause. Zuma, who was elected President this year, was tried and acquitted of raping an HIV-positive family friend. He told the court that the woman had dressed provocatively, in a traditional wrap-around kanga, and that it was against Zulu culture for a man to leave a sexually aroused woman unsatisfied.
(See a profile of South African president Jacob Zuma.)

Zuma's plainspoken views as a polygamist and a traditionalist appeal to many South African men who feel adrift in a society that defines men by the material trappings they attain.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1906000,00.html#ixzz16PPHmVk6

 

[FatOne]

According to a recent economist mag article, the common attitude in South Africa is that it is OK to rape a girl if you know her or buy her a drink.

Hey I know, lets bring more of these people over to Canada. He said sarcastically.

 

[blackrock13]

According to a recent economist mag article, the common attitude in South Africa is that it is OK to rape a girl if you know her or buy her a drink.

Hey I know, lets bring more of these people over to Canada. He said sarcastically.

There is a belief in many parts of Africa that you can fight off the scourge of aids by having sex with young children and the younger the child the better the protection. Now that may sound silly, but when, until recently, you had your leaders, health ministers, deputy PM's claiming that eating yams, sweet potatoes and turnips could help you fight aids, what would you expect?

 

[5hummer]

What constitutes rape according to this survey?

Huh??? You mean rape isn't bad enough?

 

[FatOne]

Huh??? You mean rape isn't bad enough?

In your typical womans studies department, if you even look at a woman and she doesn't want to fuck her, it is a brutal rape. So you never know. However South Africa has a long and well known rape culture, so I doubt this is an issue in this case.

 

[larry]

Huh??? You mean rape isn't bad enough?

well, what is rape? in canada everything is sexual assault. a man bumping into a woman's back end on the subway is s.a. a man groping a child is s.a. women have done themselves a disservice by lumping any action they deem unwanted (even after the fact) as s.a. it's hard to know what really happened. and obviously, we in canada are only too eager to believe s.a. men are brutal gang-rapists. i think so too. maybe we're wrong.

one thought i have is that we should allow immigration from africa, but only women. in one or two generations they would attain the freedoms we all enjoy. doesn't seem likely as really, nobody cares about these poor women.