TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 10

Subsection 7

■ SILENCES ABOUT SEXUAL ABUSE

44 One of the particularly difficult areas of silence is sexual abuse. The Commission saw its provision of the opportunity “to relate their own accounts” as a way of restoring “the human and civil dignity” of victims. For many women, relating the story of their sexual abuse would in no way serve this purpose. It would, instead, leave them feeling a loss of dignity.

45 It is, perhaps, surprising that as many women as did spoke about being raped or otherwise sexually abused. As Ms Jessie Duarte put it, “the Commission is actually asking people to open the empty cupboard and expose that there are no groceries in the cupboard and then they have to live with that”.

46 She noted the way in which the liberation movements had contributed to the silence during the 1980s, in that “if women said that they were raped, they were regarded as having sold out to the system in one way or another”.¹⁰ She noted that women were among the cruellest in enforcing these attitudes.

47 Ms Thenjiwe Mtintso suggested that men use sexual abuse to show the weakness of the men on the opposing side “because women are supposed to be these people that are protected by these men”. She suggested that sexual violence is also used by those in power to destroy the identity of women who have rejected traditional roles, for example by engaging in ‘masculine’ roles in the struggle. Seifert suggests that in a war situation men, or the ‘nation’, might well collude in silencing talk of sexual abuse.

(T)he commemoration of female war victims would pass on the violation of manhood into peacetime. This would be a continuous reminder that ‘national manhood’ has been humiliated by the enemy. What is chosen instead is the mechanism of repression.¹¹

48 Where the sexual abuse was perpetrated by men within the liberation movements, there were further pressures not to speak. Ms Thenjiwe Mtintso described how “comrades who were contacts inside the country would come outside to report … They would put up a comrade in a particular place and comrades would sleep with them. And that’s rape. That for me is rape”.

49 She described how, despite her own high position, one of her male comrades said to her:

You know, it’s going to get to the point that I am going to rape you. And it’s going to be very easy to rape you … and I know there is no way that you are going to stand in front of all these people and say I raped you.¹²

50 In presenting the ANC report to the Commission, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki acknowledged that men in the camps had committed “gender-specific offences” against their woman comrades. He said that the perpetrators had been punished, but did not describe either the offences or the punishment in any detail. In the light of these silences, Commissioner Hlengiwe Mkhize remarked that “the submission fail(ed) women”.

51 Some of those who spoke about sexual abuse said that this was the first time they had done so. Ms Thandi Shezi said that this would be the first time her mother would hear about her having been gang raped by security police. She said that one of the reasons she had remained silent was because, as so often happens with rape victims, she had felt that she was in some way to blame: “I thought I'd done something that I deserved to be treated like that.” Ms Kedibone Dube said that after her abduction and rape, she had only told her family that she was kidnapped. Other women said that they had only been able to talk after undergoing counselling.