This week and the week before as well as other weeks that have passed it is just violence and more violence when one switches on the telly or the radio. There is the story of the massacre in Natal and the serial rapist in Gauteng. One may find a bit of solace in the fact that in these two terrible fables the perpetrators have come under the strangle hold of the law. It is one particular story that rocked my psych though, that of a raped girl in a ‘private school’, not that the fact that the setting is in a private school enhances the setting.
What does the rape incident that took place at Jules High School help us learn about our selves and our system? Here is the plot, as if by now you did not know: A couple of boys apparently doped-spiked a girl’s drink and when she lost her wits, at least that is what we can imagine took place, they had their way with her, while some of their school mates watched on and others filmed the rape incident on their cell phones to create a clip that was to be retailed to other learners at that very school. And uploaded to the social network.
Now when the girl reported the matter to the school and subsequently to the police the school carelessly dismissed the girl as having invited the ordeal to her self because of her loose behavior. Now the matter will be thrown out of court for lack of evidence. Let us let logic bow in, if there was no evidence to support the rape allegations, the matter would not have found its way into national consciousness. The rape victim is the evidence, she ought to have been checked. Should she have not have consented to the act of what was done to her the evidence would be signs of forced penetration. Was she checked for such signs?
As it is the case has been cascaded to statutory rape due to the fact the peoples involved are minors. What about their parents? Have the parents distanced themselves from the actions of their children? Shouldn’t they offer pardon to the violated or do they perhaps think their children are entitled to do what they have done or that the girl (and other girls who have been raped at Jules) deserves to be violated sexually? And then there is the head master, what kind of space does he or she find themselves in? After all the events at hand are unfolding in their turf! There is a saying that we all know very well and that is universal to all evolved beings which says – children are a reflection of their guardians or parents. You could blame the girl for getting drunk or high and opening her herself up to sexual abuse or that she knew what she was doing and that she gave consent for her body to participated in the sexual ogre. But the fact still remains that the children belong to households. Given the fact that the school is a private school, we may assume that the children come from well off families. But isn’t well off connoted to the so called high culture in any society? The bourgeois?
For those who earn an honest living their lives gravitates between two polarities, home and work. Actually one’s home is like a sophisticated hostel; we go there to squeeze our spouses lovingly, monitor our children upbringing, eat and sleep and eat and go back to work. For school learners life gravitates between home and the school from where they are getting their education. How they are nurtured at home determines how they will behave when they get into the school world and later into the world in general. Since the world that they engaged in on a daily basis is that of the school, where they will meet peers, it is of out-most importance how they are brought up at home. Their home is a rock despite the little of time their may have to spent with their parents.
At school depending on whether the educators who are responsible for giving the children education have the love for their very own children the child’s guidance continues on another level, that of professionalism, discipline, respect and integrity and many other positive qualities that the child will need in order to be a well rounded human being.
The rape situation at Jules High School and many other schools throws into stark relief our carelessness from our households to those deemed responsible for our children intellectual coaching, the educators. The failure of the law and other organizations or institutes positioned in our society to deal with issues of human rights violations and good conduct in order to instill morality demonstrates that the rot is highly contagious since we are failing to deal with cases diligently to set out examples of what is not permissible in our society. The worst case scenario will be an incident in the near future where a married woman is raped by her male colleagues in their office blog or conversely, a man gets raped while his other colleagues watch and film the incident to post the entire thing on the social network. And no law prevails over the matter. Then doomsday would’ve arrived.
20 November
© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2010
-25.746019
28.187120
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