Sexual violence in South Africa

The rate of sexual violence in South Africa is among the highest in the world. Sexual violence is the use of force or manipulation to get someone to engage in unwanted sexual activity without their consent. An estimated of 100,000 rape cases take place in the country every year.

According to the report by the United Nations Office on Crimes and Drugs for the period 1998–2000, South Africa was ranked first for rapes per capita. In 1998, one in three of the 4,000 women questioned in Johannesburg had been raped, according to Community Information, Empowerment and Transparency (CIET) Africa. While women's groups in South Africa estimate that a woman is raped every 26 seconds, the South African police estimates that a woman is raped every 36 seconds.

More than 25% of a sample of 1,738 South African men from the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape Provinces admitted to raping someone when anonymously questioned; of these, nearly half said they had raped more than one person, according to a non-peer reviewed policy brief issued by the Medical Research Council (MRC). Several news publications wrongly extrapolated these results to the rest of the South African population, giving reported rape prevalence several times higher in the two provinces in question. Nearly three out of four men who admitted rape stated they had first forced a woman or girl into sex before the age of 20, and nearly one in ten admitted to doing so before the age of 10.

A survey from the comprehensive study "Rape in South Africa" from 2000 indicated that 2.1% of women aged 16 years or older across population groups reported that they had been sexually abused at least once between the beginning of 1993 and March 1998, results which seem to starkly conflict the MRC survey results. Similarly, The South African demographic and health survey of 1998 gave results of rape prevalence at 4.0% of all women aged between 15 and 49 years in the sampled households (a survey also performed by the Medical Research Council and Department of Health). So far no attempts have been made to address these large statistical disparities.

For an explanation for the "large statistical disparities," see paragraph below stating that "most rapes go unreported."

It is estimated that over 40% of South African women will be raped in their lifetime and that only 1 in 4 rapes are reported. It is also estimated that 14% of perpetrators of rape are convicted in South Africa. In 1997, violence against women was added as one of the priority crimes under the National Crime Prevention Strategy; nevertheless, the rates of reported rape, sexual abuse of children and domestic violence continue to rise.

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