The Sunday Mail
Joram Nyathi Group Political Editor
I am not aware of any rational and acceptable reason or justification for rape. People have been able to excuse murder or the hanging of fellow men or women for certain crimes. Judges and magistrates have been able to reduce what was initially deemed murder to culpable homicide depending on the circumstances under which the crime was committed.
Where a case cannot be proved beyond reasonable doubt, a murderer has been allowed to get away with murder, as it were. All this is done to avoid condemning an innocent person to the gallows on the basis of erroneous information.
It is deemed preferable for such a person to enjoy the benefit of the doubt.
Not so with rape, unless perhaps an alienist is engaged to prove that the accused in a rape case is not of a sound mental state, is not fully in charge of his faculties and therefore, for all practical purposes, the accused is not responsible for his actions, in which case such a person should ordinarily be confined to an appropriate mental institution for possible rehabilitation since society cannot tolerate his anti-social behaviour, especially given the risk of repeating the offensive behaviour.
I am trying to show that humankind in general has not been able to find any excuse for rape as has been adduced for murder, and thus treats rape with such moral opprobrium whenever it occurs.
Yet it appears that this crime of passion and lust is on the increase, not just in India as some would want to believe, but all over the world.
It is reportedly most prevalent in war situations, of course, across all age groups. Lately young boys have also increasingly become victims of sexual abuse.
My interest is, however, focused on Zimbabwe.
There have been shocking reports of abuse of children and babies in recent years that government has been forced to come up with a ministerial task force to deal with the vice.
On Thursday Vice-President Joice Mujuru launched the National Action Plan Against Rape in Harare, an indication that the Government takes the incidence of rape very seriously.
Speaking at the launch event, VP Mujuru read shocking statistics from the police: over 10 000 women and girls were raped between 2012 and March this year; of these 3 571 were adult women while the rest, 7 411, were female juveniles – including babies a few months old.
That’s just how senseless and callous the attacks can be. Part of what has prodded Government into action beyond routine policing by the Zimbabwe Republic Police was the much publicised case of Robert Martin Gumbura who was convicted of raping and abusing women followers of his RMG End Time sect.
He was sentenced to an effective 40 years in prison. Women’s groups said he should get a life term. Others said he should be hanged.
Since then there has been agitation that rapists should be castrated.
Lately First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe has raised the stakes, saying rapists should be hanged or beheaded.
Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development Minister Oppah Muchinguri agitated for the death penalty for rapists when she told the story of a Buhera man who allegedly raped and impregnated his two daughters. The man was acquitted for lack of evidence.
In saying the Buhera man most probably committed the crimes, one is not in any way trying to impugn the judicial officer. It is rather to point to the need for better education for rape victims; the need to preserve evidence and to report the crime as soon as they are able to do so.
Drivers are required to do the same in the event of a vehicle accident. It helps the police and strengthens the victim’s case.
The judicial officer in the Buhera case wanted to err on the side of caution, and this is very important given the spirited lobbying by women’s groups, which has now been joined by senior Government ministers and other public officials to have rapists beheaded or hanged or castrated.
It’s really a chilling prospect and that is what prompted this article.
VP Mujuru told the National Action Plan Against Rape launch event that society should “develop a culture of zero tolerance to rape and sexual violence”.
She urged traditional leaders to “create community-based protection systems” to fight the scourge.
“Courts also have to be supportive and give stiffer and deterrent sentences for rapists,” she said.
The First Lady and Minister Oppah Muchinguri would clearly say that’s not drastic enough.
What’s the way forward? Is there a middle way? Are we ready to localise cock fighting as a sport?
First, the debate around the death penalty has been a long one. It can never be resolved so long as people tend to react in an emotional way to immediate traumatic experiences and want to make laws around such a trauma.
But the truth is that it has never been demonstrated conclusively that the death penalty is as efficacious a deterrent as its advocates would want us to believe.
For many years we have had the death penalty on our statutes but there is no indication that murder cases have declined.
Second, it is not clear how hanging or beheading a rapist meets the justice of the case.
Without at all trying to justify the crime, as explained above, rape and murder cannot be balanced on the scale of justice, given death’s finality and that in fact a murderer can be set free if there is no conclusive evidence.
Yet justice can surely be served by having the rapist locked away for life while the rape victim can receive counselling, rehabilitation and be allowed to move on.
We have Opprah Winfrey as a living example who has succeeded in life way beyond her childhood trauma. Third, Zimbabweans generally make themselves out to be a Christian nation, which places their religiosity in the New Testament, which firmly rejects any acts of vengeance. Do we want to go back to the eye-for-an-eye precepts of the Old Testament?
Fourth, I am trying to find how we would want to reconcile ourselves with the whole idea of setting up the guillotine where rapists would be beheaded or pilloried or burnt on the stack.
Are we really that primitive, barbaric even, that we want to turn the murder for a crime of rape into a spectator sport where people come to witness and cheer as the offender screams out for mercy? A perverted form of cock fighting?
I have read about how women in the Arab world are often publicly stoned for adultery.
A hole is dug in the ground and the victim is buried up to the waist or just below the shoulders before she is stoned to death. Perhaps we find that exciting!
The same goes for those who want rapists castrated. Finally, having whetted the nation’s appetite for blood, we should not pretend shock when people resort to mob justice and lynch suspected rapists.
I am sure civilisation has given the world a lot of less sadistic options.
Then there is just the possibility that there could be a mistake in the judgment, and the sentence is upheld on appeal and the President doesn’t grant clemency.
We are all ready to hang, behead, stone to death or castrate! It’s all done and we wait for the next offender, presumably to be guillotined at the National Sports Stadium!
Don’t we have a surfeit of murder cases on a daily basis already without seeking to make gratuitous top-ups?
There is a statement attributed to a 12th century legal theorist, Maimonides, in which he opted to err on the side of caution than play an infallible god, and observed thus: “It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.”
