But it is not confined to this country only. And it has been going on in other parts of Africa for years, escalating during wars. In the Congo, stories of atrocities have been reported since the civil war started in the early 1990’s; with the world turning the other way. The situation is found in Iraq, where women are also exposed to retribution and isolation from their own families due to the traditional attitudes prevalent in Middle Eastern societies. The same phenomenon was seen in Bosnia during the war.
What is wrong with our society? What causes people to aggress others in such a humiliating manner; and so barbarically? Can we do something more than just feeling upset about this? Are governments and civilians equally to blame? What is the role of multinational companies in these ongoing horror stories? In the Congo a little-known mineral is the source of great wealth for governments, companies, rebels and adventurers as it is sought for the production and manufacture of cell phones. It is called coltan. I had never heard of it before. It is also used for laptops. I use both – and have never made any connection between my cell phone, my laptop and rape victims in the Congo. There are other highly-sought minerals in the Congo and other African countries.
Jan Goodwin in an article he wrote in February 1994, called these “blood minerals”: The commerce in these "blood" minerals, such as coltan, used in cell phones and laptops, cobalt, copper, gold, diamonds and uranium (Congolese uranium was used in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), drives the conflict.
But laptops and cell phones are not manufactured in the Congo, or in Sierra Leone, or in Liberia. So maybe there are some hard questions that need to be asked; and straightforward answers that need to be given. Where do we start?
In South Africa as we are preparing for elections next year, rape and its associate consequences should be high up on the agenda. The ANC ruling party’s preferred candidate for the highest office of state president was himself a rape trialist last year. He was acquitted. Yet so many questions remain in the public mind. His utterances about women during that trial and ever since have been a cause for concern, not only among women but also among ordinary decent people.
The ANC Women's League launched its plan for the annual 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children campaign, saying its focus this year would be on consolidating and generating more awareness of the negative impact of violence on women and children, reports IOL online.
At the launch in Durban last Thursday, ANC Women's League provincial chairperson Lungi Gcabashe said the league would concentrate on increasing awareness of children's and women's rights, and challenge perpetrators to change their behaviour.
"We will engage with men and boys, starting within our structures in the ANC, to combat violence," she said.
There so many questions that we need to be asking ourselves. What do other political parties think about rape? And what do they think about violence to women and children (and men), what is called domestic violence? What do the moral guardians of society say, the church leaders, the Imams, the Rabbis; where is the voice of business and the trade union movement?
Maybe this should be a starting point to open a public debate, even before going to the wider issues of crime, and violent crime and its causes? Do we need to have our country to be drawn into the barbarism we have seen in the Congo, and that is still going on? Or should we be reminded by other horror killings like in Rwanda during 1994, while we were celebrating our own accession to political freedom on April 27 th? More than 800,000 people were butchered during that conflict which was fanned to no small degree by foreign government and business interests. That tragedy is often described as a tribal affair. My foot! That's too convenient.
Rwanda is accusing France of complicity in the killings; and diplomatic relations between the two countries have worsened since Rwanda published a judicial report backing up these claims early this year. Why can't the International Court of Justice be more forthcoming? And the EU's Human Rights Commision? The US could also show more candidness in the affair as they have been accused of knowing silence. The case of rwanda is not unique.
In the Congo more than nearly five million people have been reported killed from the on-going conflict. Who is responsible for all this? A French NGO, Survie, publishes regular reports on alleged French involvement in various conflicts in a number of Francophone countries. These are mainly igmored by the mainline media of both the West and Africa.
Is it possible to publish such material in Africa; and to protect our citizens from state terror?
Here are two articles on the rape tragedies of the Congo and Iraq that show what is happening to our fellow human beings while we are being kept in ignorant un-bliss. Where was the international media? And the Western governments and their African and Arab lackeys? Where were they? Where are they now in the Congo? In Iraq? Tomorrow it will be Zimbabwe – or is it today? Tomorrow it may be South Africa; or the Cameroun; or Gabon. Or is today?
Rape's vast toll in Iraq war remains largely ignored
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1124/p07s01-wome.html
In the Congo, rape is a cheaper weapon of war than bullets.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040308/goodwin
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