Viola, synonymous with manhood in South Africa
He was 15 years and girls was smaller than him. Twenty years later the woman sought out and begged him to forgive, something quite unusual in a country which is deeply rooted culture of sexual violation.
Rebombo agreed to tell his story to The Associated Press, to coincide with a conference that provides a report that over a quarter of South Africans consulted in a survey admitted to having raped someone.
South Africa has one of the highest rates of rape in the world. Police records indicate that in 2007 were raped 36,000 women, almost 100 per day and this figure can fall short, because many violations are not reported because of stigma and trauma that they represent.
“The violation is considered a duty for men,” said Rachel Jewkes, director of the study.
Preliminary findings of the study, conducted by the respected and Medical Research Council, issued last month, generated horror, but not surprised the defenders of human rights.
“This is the story of many children, many men,” said Rebombo, who is now 48 years, is divorced and the father of three children.
Her experience reflects the deep cultural roots of the problem in a country rife with violence and with a devastating legacy emotional, social and economic segregation.
When I was a teenager, haunted by what Rebombo to be sufficiently “macho.”
Circumcision was considered a key moment in the life of a child, but his father almost died when he was subjected to the intervention in health and recently vowed that his son did not suffer such abuse. Therefore, Rebombo was undergoing all sorts of ridicule. “I said it was not a real man,” said Rebombo, a burly individual, to speak gently.
The only way to prove that it was well male was raping a woman.
The other boys pushed him to “give a lesson” to a girl who did not want to go out with them. Resisted, but finally relented. Decided to do a Saturday and prepared to consume beer and marijuana to combat fear.
“I could not breathe. I never had a sexual relationship. I was scared,” he said.
Other boys took the girl to an isolated spot and left with a friend and Rebombo.
“He (the friend) started to rape her. She resisted. I looked, dizzy by all that he had taken. He stopped me and said, ‘Your turn’. I assembled it,” said Rebombo.
When they finished, she ran, “he added. He stated that after the rape, do not remember whether he had an erection or not.
Consumed by guilt and fearful of what she claims, tried to prevent it and a year later moved to another town.
In 1996 he lived in Johannesburg and worked with a religious organization that helps women with children who have no work. What shocked the women recounted stories of abuse and violence that had been submitted and began working with agencies trying to end that violence.
“That forced me to analyze my own situation. I felt the need to locate it and apologize,” he said.
Then his old village and searched.
“I told him what he had done years ago had been very ill and asked him to forgive me.”
Between sobs, she told him that she had been raped by two other men. She was married and had children and never told anyone about the rapes, but sometimes trembled when her husband played. His life was never the same, he told the woman.
However, accepted the apology and forgave Rebombo, although it was not easy.
“Maybe you can teach men that they should not do that,” he told Rebombo.
Today the Foundation works with Rebombo Olive Leaf, which helps parents and children cope with HIV / AIDS, child abuse and sexual violence.
The violation is a “deeply rooted in the concept of what is being a man” in South Africa, said the study presented at the conference.
Many experts say the incidence of rape reflects the violence, repression, poverty and psychological deterioration of the system of racial segregation.
“The violence of apartheid became an instrument of control and violence became the norm,” said activist in the cause of human rights Mbuyiselo Botha. “The men were castrated and were discharging their frustration and humiliation among the most vulnerable, women and children.
An estimated 5.1 million of the 50 million people in South Africa carry the AIDS virus, which represents the highest rate in the world.
Despite progress since apartheid was defeated 15 years ago, traditional attitudes to women which lower still perpetuated by public figures like President Jacob Zuma, a polygamist with three wives and that in 2006 after he was accused of rape Unprotected sexual intercourse with the daughter of a family friend who was a carrier of HIV.
Zuma was acquitted, but his comments about women, sex and Zulu culture generated much controversy and ugly scenes off the court, where some of his supporters burned pictures of women.
Recently, a judge sentenced her to four years’ imprisonment for any individual found guilty of rape and said it was lenient because it was a man “educated” and the victim was “an adult woman” who had made finger, according to The Star
Jewkes, director of the study, said the violations were “closely associated” with the traumas of childhood and family structures “abnormal”, in which one parent is forced to leave home for work.
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