South Africa's terrible stats of violence against women.
A WOMAN is raped every 10 minutes in South Africa, one is beaten up every six minutes - and seven women are murdered, on average, every day.
This harrowing picture of widespread brutality against women and young girls emerged from the police annual crime statistics released this week.
The police figures show that rape increased nationally by 4% between April 2004 and March 2005. Countrywide, 55 114 cases were reported. Sixty percent of the victims were adult women, and 40% children.
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In grad school, I had a friend who did field research in South Africa, and one day was shocked to find a man beating his wife in the middle of the street. She tried to get people to intervene, but no one would. And when she suggested calling the police, then moved away from her (as the police could be worse than the crime).
There is no doubt that what is happening today in South Africa is terrible, particularly for women. However, I find the shock you express a bit confusing, particularly when South Africa’s stats are considered in light of the social changes that have occurred and compared to the U.S.. Indeed, given that South Africa is a country that has gone through massive social upheaval their stats appear to be in-line with the U.S., the richest most advanced country on earth (this of course may be cold comfort).
According to the FBI, in 2003 (the last year they have full data available on-line) in the U.S. there were 93, 433 forcible rapes. On average this means there were 256 rapes per day, or about 1.8 every ten minutes. Also according to the FBI, in the same year there were 3, 215 women murdered, or 8.8 women per day (an interesting side bar, there were 30.6 murders of men per day for the same time period).
In fairness to U.S. law enforcement agencies (or if you have read the book Freakonomics, the credit may go to Feminists), I understand that the figures for crime in the U.S. have been steadily improving. However, I think as we lament the problems in other countries we should not forget to look to our own house (as a Canadian I mean this figuratively as my house is actually a bit north and colder than my American friends to the South).
Ephemeral-
I agree with you completely. Most of the time I say exactly that we focus on the harms done to women in other countries without a solid investigation of just how severe the situation is here. I do not post on other countries with the assumption that we are somehow better. Check some of my archives, I have argued this point over and over and over.
So yeah, I agree we are fucked up, moreso because we are to be the "uber" democracy.