Teenage Rape Gangs Roam South Africa

Source: THE CAMPAIGN FOR RADICAL TRUTH IN HISTORY
On the web at: http://www.hoffman-info.com

Teenage Rape Gangs Roam South Africa

(1/19/97) TERROR is stalking the white women of South Africa. Already confronting the world’s worst murder rate, South Africa has a harrowing new fact to face: there is a rape every 25 seconds in the land that Nelson Mandela hoped would become a “rainbow alliance” of people living in peace together.

The clamour for the death penalty to be reintroduced is growing as details of each new case emerge.

A study by Interpol, the international police agency, has revealed that South Africa leads the world in rapes. A report by the country’s ministry of safety and security showed there were 23,806 rapes in the first six months of last year. Even that is an underestimate, however. Thousands of other rapes go unreported; police estimate that for each rape they are notified about, another 35 take place.

In two cases this month, a gang of black youths entered the homes of white middle-class families in Johannesburg suburbs and attacked the young women inside.

“I was gazing through the window at the beautiful sunset when I suddenly heard an African voice behind me saying, ‘You there, you’re dead’,” said the mother of two women who were raped in the family home. A gun was held to her head.

Although most middle-class white South Africans have high security fences and routinely carry guns, the woman later learned that three robbers had managed to scale the outside wall and entered the house through open patio doors. Her husband, grandson and daughters were dragged into the living room, tied up and forced to lie on the floor. The men searched the house for money and valuables.

They threatened to kill the family dog before untying the woman’s younger daughter, aged 21. They took her upstairs and raped her at gunpoint. They then raped the 24-year-old daughter. At one point the elder daughter’s three-year-old son tried to defend his mother and aunt with a plastic toy sword.

The boy’s grandmother recalled: “He was so brave… He stood in front of this man who was armed with a gun and waved the sword at him. Even when the man put a gun to his head, he never flinched.”

The story of the toddler’s brave actions, and accounts of an equally shocking gang-rape of two teenage cousins a week later in a nearby suburb, have fueled calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty. Murder and rape suspects are frequently released on bail by the country’s overburdened courts. Mandela’s government has refused to yield to public pressure for a return to the death penalty.

The scale of violence against white women prompted concern that the crime wave could hit government attempts to build a successful economy. Tourist revenue is also likely to be hit as people from Europe stay away for fear that they, too, could end up raped or dead.

Sydney Mufumadi, the minister responsible for security, described the situation as “very worrying.”