In recent times South Africans have been shocked and horrified at being faced with a plague of rape against their women, with child and infantile rape among the non white communities an epidemic that shows no signs of letting up.
A woman is raped in South Africa every 17 seconds in a country with the highest incidence of reported rape in the world, and this does not include the number of child rape victims!
With this kind of scourge one would think a government would take a hard-line stance against rape  And besides, it comes easy to our savages, with rape long being the national sport  in South Africa…didn’t you know that? Well now you do..!
Violence against women, especially rape, has added its own brand of shame to recent wars. From conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina to Peru to Rwanda, girls and women have been singled out for rape, imprisonment, torture and execution. Rape, identified by psychologists as the most intrusive of traumatic events, is often used as a weapon of war in ‘ethnic cleansing’. Sexual violation of women erodes the fabric of a community in a way that few weapons can. Rape’s damage can be devastating because of the strong communal reaction to the violation and pain stamped on entire families. The harm inflicted in such cases on a woman by a rapist is an attack on her family and culture, as in many societies women are viewed as repositories of a community’s cultural and spiritual values. The disintegration of families in times of war leaves women and girls especially vulnerable to violence. Nearly 80 per cent of the 53 million people uprooted by wars today are women and children. When fathers, husbands, brothers and sons are drawn away to fight, they leave women, the very young and the elderly to fend for themselves. So is it not right that rape should be considered a war crime?

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has voiced serious concerns about South Africa’s alleged refusal to support a UN General Assembly resolution condemning rape used as a weapon of war, particularly in view of the fact that one of the most important decisions taken at the UN Women’s Conference in 1995 in Beijing was that rape in a conflict or war situation should be treated as a war crime. DA spokesperson Sheila Camerer says: ‘I was part of the 25-woman government delegation led by our present Foreign Minister Nkosazana ‘Fatgat’ Dlamini Zuma and Public Service minister Geraldine ‘Lardarse’ Fraser-Moleketi, and we were at the forefront of efforts to get this point written into the Conference Declaration. The Beijing Declaration establishing rape in conflict situations as a war crime was regarded as a great step forward in gender terms and by women’s groups around the world, and it would indeed be a sad day if S.A. should be party to any move to diminish that achievement.

It is all the more surprising then that South Africa’s UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo is insisting instead on wording that recommends a general condemnation of all forms of rape. This is well and good, but perhaps he is unaware of our own Foreign Minister’s role.

South Africa’s objection to the resolution has dismayed a number of international observers, including the UN representative of Human Rights Watch and the US assistant Secretary of State for international organisation affairs. South Africa’s performance at the UN to date has been disappointing to many people who expect South Africa to take a firm stand for human rights and dignity. Our UN ambassador said that condemning rape related to war was the business of the Security Council, and not the General Assembly. Usually, the opposite reason is given to justify why South Africa failed to take a principled stand on human rights issues. Given South Africa’s own dismal track record with sexual crimes and violence against women and children, opposition to a well-intentioned draft resolution aimed at improving the safety of women affected by war is extremely disappointing’.