Ordinary people, government slammed for attitude to rapes

ANENE Booysen, a 17-year-old Western Cape cleaner, and Jyoti Singh Pandey, a 23-year-old student from India, had little in common until their brutal deaths.

In the space of two months, between December 2012 and February 2013, both were raped, disembowelled and murdered in vicious attacks almost 10000km apart.

Booysen was found at a construction site after a night out with friends, while Pandey was dumped on the side of the road after being gang-raped and beaten on a bus after seeing a movie.

While the crimes may have been similar, reaction in their home countries was not.

Pandey's attack led to large-scale public protests in India and a mass global anti-rape campaign, while South Africa's response was "sporadic and uncoordinated", in keeping with its "fickle" response to the country's crisis of sexual violence.

This was the finding of a research paper released yesterday.

The paper, initiated by German non-profit organisation the Heinrich Böll Foundation, found that "while Anene's death was catapulted into the public domain ... it elicited a sad murmuring of social mobilisation".

This was in stark contrast to India, where men and women from different classes and castes took to the streets in protest, and demanding government action.

Their persistence paid off and a new law broadening the definition of rape was passed.

But in South Africa, the report notes, "as horrific as Anene's death was, it did not become a galvanising force for community outcry that cut across racial and class divides".

The report adds: "The response to Anene's death is that, unlike India, there certainly was no aweinspiring moment of a people coming together to demand an end to rampant sexual violence." And, while Pandey's body was received by the country's prime minister and president and escorted to her funeral, a small group of ordinary people raised funds for a tombstone for Booysen.

Politicians did, however, attend Booysen's funeral – but the report notes some used the opportunity to politick. Government also invested R10-million to create jobs in Booysen's home town of Bredasdorp, but the report said this was "misplaced and delinked" from the issue of sexual violence.

"Glaringly obvious is the fact that other than this gesture, nothing much has changed ... The subliminal message is that rape is naturalised, normalised and trivialised," the report says.

It added that South Africa had some of the worst rape statistics worldwide, which may have led to society becoming "desensitised".

The paper compared coverage of the Booysen case to that of Reeva Steenkamp's shooting, noting Steenkamp's personality made headlines because she was an "up and coming socialite" and the celebrity status of her boyfriend.

But in media coverage of Booysen, her personality and thoughts appear to be "inconsequential".

Johannes Khana was convicted and sentenced to two life sentences for Booysen's rape and murder, while four men were sentenced to death and a minor sent to a reformatory for the Pandey attack. - Aarti J Narsee