Home » » Abuse Against Women » The Plight of South African Schoolgirls

The Plight of South African Schoolgirls

© Moira Richards

A recent Human Rights Watch report states that one of the greatest dangers that a South African schoolgirl must face is that of being gang-raped.

In the report, a 13-year-old girl tells of how she was gang-raped by some of her classmates. No one at the school took her allegations seriously, nor was she offered any support, protection or comfort by the school's staff. The boys who had raped her were allowed to continue to harass her until she dropped out of school a week later, despite having been a good student.

Another girl (9 years old) tells of how two older schoolboys forced her into the school's toilets and raped her there. The principal helped her to identify the boys, who admitted to the rape. He then talked to the girl's parents and convinced them to accept money from the boys' parents, instead of pressing criminal charges against them. The parents agreed, and the boys were allowed to continue attending the school and were never disciplined or counseled about their crime. This young girl must still go to the same school every day, even though she is severely traumatised.

Two boys tried to rape a classmate. She managed to escape them but decided not to press charges against them. She accepted their apology from them and continues to attend school with them. She feels that if she were to get the boys into trouble over their behaviour, that she would not be safe from even greater violence from them.

A 14-year-old schoolgirl talks of the constant sexual harassment that she and the other girls are subjected to at school. Older boys try to fondle them and they make lewd sexual comments to the girls. Any girls that object or resist this treatment are threatened by the boys with physical violence. The school staff does little if anything to discipline the boys, and often the male teachers behave in the same way as the boys do, towards the girls.

The report includes the testimony of schoolboys that they use this type of behaviour to assert a dominance over the girls - to 'put them in their place.' Often a dating relationship between two school kids is characterised by abusive behaviour by the boy toward his girlfriend, and the school authorities do nothing to stop this either - this precursor of domestic violence.

The copyright of the article The Plight of South African Schoolgirls in Abuse Against Women is owned by Teresa Brouwer. Permission to republish The Plight of South African Schoolgirls in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.