by Mayibuye Magwaza

Rape is a part of South African culture. It’s a disgusting and abominable part that we need to discard, but it’s definitely a part of South African culture.

There, I went and said it. The next time you hear a South African defending something – anything – on the basis that it is ‘part of their culture’, ask them whether the same defence applies to rape. It’ll create an awkward silence at the table, or a furious argument. Guaranteed.

Seriously, no one defends this crime – well, no one in the mainstream discourse – but it keeps happening. It happens so often, in fact, that a recent study by the Medical Research Council found that 1 in 4 of the men in their sample admitted to raping someone.

Naturally, the obvious (and erroneous) move is to think that 1 in 4 South African men is a rapist. Such a move isn’t justified: The sample size isn’t big enough, and we don’t know enough about the data, or the actual study. We don’t know enough about the sampling or the methodology or the definition of rape that they used. A press release is no substitute for a full explanation.

However, even if the results are wrong by quite a large amount, the fundamental direction that it points in is clear. Significant numbers of South African men are committing rape, and they obviously don’t see it as a problem. Overall, maybe it’s only 1 in 8 men. Heck, maybe it’s only 1 in 10, or 1 in 15.

However, it seems that it’s becoming a large enough subset that it can meaningfully be considered part of our culture. If 1 in 10 South African men either has committed, or would consider committing rape – well, that’s a pretty big cultural artifact.
It’s definitely enough that we need to ask ourselves some hard, searching questions about South African culture. This is not a disconnected, abstract phenomenon. It’s a direct outgrowth of the way very large numbers of South African men think and behave.

I’m quite obviously not the first person to see this. I’m also not the first person to bring up the notion of a South African ‘rape culture’. Ask Google. Heck, the Guardian news report on the survey in question talks about an “endemic culture of sexual violence”.

The question that arises: Is there ‘a rape culture’ in South Africa, or is rape part of South African culture?

This may seem like semantics, but there’s a difference. ‘A rape culture’ makes it sound as if it’s an isolated phenomenon, separate from the rest of South Africa’s culture. To draw parallels with another recent topic: we don’t speak about ‘a vuvuzela culture’ – we talk about vuvuzelas, and whether they are really part of South African culture, or just an annoying marketing ploy.

Trying to treat sexual violence as a separate phenomenon is meaningless. Attempting to fix the rape problem without acknowledging that South African culture is fundamentally broken is a waste of time.

Contemplating this issue, I’m reminded of a George Carlin skit on politicians:

Now, there’s one thing you might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out.

Fantastic numbers of South African men are committing violent crimes – ranging from common assault to murder, via rape and child molestation – every year. Like Carlin’s politicians, these men did not get dropped onto our planet by aliens. They come from among us. They are South Africans, doing what South Africans do – which, apparently, is rape and murder other South Africans. How do we fix this? I don’t know. But acknowledging that we need to ask hard questions about South African culture is probably a good start.