South Africa 
Harassment and rape hampering girls' education in SA

The respected US group Human Rights Watch today presented its 138-page report, "Scared at School: Sexual Violence Against Girls in South African Schools". The report confirms earlier reports that sexual violence is especially rampant in South African schools, and also outlines the negative effects this has on girls' education - the most important basis for gender equality - in that country.

- Girls are learning that sexual violence and abuse are an inescapable part of going to school every day, so they don't go, said Erika George, counsel to the Academic Freedom Program at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report. "South African officials say they're committed to educational equality. If they mean it, they must address the problem of sexual violence in schools, without delay." 

The report is based on extensive interviews with victims, their parents, teachers, and school administrators in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, and the Western Cape. It documents how girls are raped, sexually abused, sexually harassed, and assaulted at school by their male classmates and even by their teachers. 

Girls fall victims to fellow students, but more often to teachers and school employees. Teachers can misuse their authority to sexually abuse girls, sometimes reinforcing sexual demands with threats of corporal punishment or promises of better grades, or even money. Typical assaults are rape and sexual coercion by teachers and school employees, sexual abuse, advances, and harassment by teachers, abuses of authority taking advantage of vulnerability, "dating" relationships, rape and sexual violence by fellow students, sexual harassment and violence in transit to and from school. 

"We must keep it within the school"
Describing assaults by teachers and the education system's impotence in dealing with it properly, the report makes mention of the case of "MC", a fifteen-year-old high school student interviewed in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. She was asked to visit her teacher in his room. "I thought, he's a teacher, it'll be fine," said MC. There, she was drugged and raped. Says 15-year old MC: "I was scared to tell anyone because I was afraid no one would believe me. I had been raped before and no one believed me then."

MC thought she would just forget about the rape, but her aggressor persisted in pursuing her for sex. She told Human Rights Watch: "The next day he asked me to come back." The teacher tried different approaches to lure MC back to his room, once under the pretence of private language tutoring and another time with promises of better grades. Becoming aware of fellow students being victim to the same teacher, MC told her mother, who went to the school to complain. They were met with a hostile reception and advised by the school principal not to report the incident to police, saying "we must keep it within the school". 

MC's family did not heed the school's advice and brought the case to the attention of the police. Even after the case had been filed, the school did not immediately take any action, such as initiating a disciplinary proceeding. After MC's allegations became public, at least six other girls from MC's school, aged between fourteen and sixteen, came forward and complained that the same teacher had either raped them or made sexual propositions to them.

Interviewing girls from a variety of different social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds, Human Rights Watch learned that sexual assault occurs in prestigious predominantly white schools, in impoverished predominantly black township schools, in schools for the learning disabled, and even in primary schools. "Privilege often does not protect a girl against sexual violence, while poverty may render her more vulnerable to assault," the report concludes.

Government passive
The South African government has acknowledged the problem's severity and made significant efforts to improve the state response to violence against women. But the Human Rights Watch report found that school officials still fail to protect their girl pupils from rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. The government does not even collect data on the incidence of sexual violence and harassment occurring in schools, or the number of girls who leave school due to such violence. 

While it is mandatory to report child abuse in South Africa, girls who report sexual abuse generally receive hostile or indifferent responses from school authorities. According to the report, schools often promise to handle matters internally, and urge girls' families not to alert police or draw publicity to problems. 

The South African government has constitutional and international legal obligations to protect women and girls from violence. International human rights treaties that South Africa has ratified, as well as national legislation, require the government to provide all children an education that is free from discrimination on the basis of sex. Failure to prevent and redress persistent gender-based violence in schools operates as a discriminatory deprivation of the right to education for girls. 

Human Rights Watch called on the South African government and its National Department of Education to develop a national plan of action to address the problem of school-based sexual violence, in broad cooperation with students, parents, teachers, and school administrators. "South Africa needs a systematic strategy to address the problem, George said. "Leadership at every level is vital to create an education system free of gender bias and sexual violence." 

Human Rights Watch urged the government to adopt and disseminate a set of standard procedural guidelines governing how schools are to address allegations of sexual violence and explaining how schools should treat victims, and perpetrators, of violence. 

Sexual violence is rampant in South African society, also outside the schoolyard. According to a 1997 South African government report, rape and "sexual abuse of children are increasing rapidly and are matters of grave concern." From 1996 to 1998, girls aged seventeen and under constituted approximately 40 percent of reported rape and attempted rape victims nationally. One of five young women surveyed in southern Johannesburg reported a history of sexual abuse by the age of eighteen. Another recent study investigating sexual violence suggests that there has been a steady increase in the proportion of women reporting having been raped before age fifteen.

HIV/AIDS risks
South Africa is also a country where the HIV/AIDS epidemic is growing fastest in the world, and young girls are becoming the principal victims. For biological reasons, women are more vulnerable than men to sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. This is especially marked in younger girls, whose genital tracts are still not fully mature. 

South African adolescent girls are twice as likely to become infected with HIV as boys, according to government studies. This is most commonly explained through women's biological vulnerability and the fact that young women in South Africa are likely to be coerced into sex, or raped - usually by someone older, who has had greater exposure to the virus. 

In neighbouring Botswana, the country with the highest AIDS prevalence in the world, focus has been set on securing girls and women from sexual assaults - which are still rampant in the country. "Since we know that HIV/AIDS has no cure, being raped is akin to being sentenced to death," female Minister Tebelelo Seretse said at a gathering in Gaborone this month, marking the introduction by the Setswana government on tough action against rape.

Source: Based on Human Rights Watch and afrol archives

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