It is hard to get my mind wrapped around statistics below that were published on CBS News and World, November 26, 2010.
(AP)”A new survey says more than one in three South African men admit to having committed rape.
A 2010 study led by the government-funded Medical Research Foundation says that in Gauteng province, home to South Africa’s most populous city of Johannesburg, more than 37 percent of men said they had raped a woman. Nearly 7 percent of the 487 men surveyed said they had participated in a gang rape.
More than 51 percent of the 511 women interviewed said they’d experienced violence from men, and 78 percent of men said they’d committed violence against women.
A quarter of the women interviewed said they’d been raped, but the study says only one in 25 rapes are reported to police.
A survey by the same organization in 2008 found that 28 percent of men in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces said they had raped a woman or girl. Of the men who had committed rape, one third did not feel guilty, said Rachel Jewkes, a lead researcher on both studies.
Two-thirds of the men surveyed in that study said they raped because of a sense of sexual entitlement. Other popular motivating factors included a desire to punish women who rejected or angered them, and raping out of boredom, Jewkes said.”
So many of us in our safe little beds in our safe little homes in other parts of the world are unaware of how bad the statistics are in Africa and even if they were what could they do to change them. There are many ways. Spend the next hour googling up articles on this subject and ways to help. The Lamplighters are trying to get chapters installed in every area of Africa, especially in South Africa where the problem is most severe. We need to join hands and hearts to make a difference.
