Silent Protest

On Friday (19 April), I participated in the campus wide Silent Protest. The Silent Protest is a day that is devoted to raising awareness about sexual violence and harassment. The protest started in 2007, after Jacob Zuma's rape trial. 

Jacob Zuma, current SA President

Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is the current president of South Africa and was elected in 2009. In November 2005, alligations were brought against Zuma by Fezeka Kuzwayo, stating that Zuma raped her. 

Outside the trial 

At both the beginning and end of the trial, supporters for both sides were visible. On one side of the road were the supporters of Zuma, about 8,000 at large, chanting that Kuzwayo was a liar and that she would burn in hell. On the other side of the road, maybe 80 supporters held signs that said "we believe you".

The results of the trail were that on 8 May 2006, the court found Zuma not guilty of the charge of rape. Due to death threats, her house being burnt, Fezeka Kuzwayo had to leave the country. On 3 July 2007 she was granted asylum in the Neatherlands. Kuzwayo will never be able to return home due to threats against her life. 

This is the beginning of the discussion about the rape culture of South Africa. When I decided that I wanted to spend five months in South Africa, countless people felt the need to alert me that South Africa was the rape capital of the world. I assured everyone that I had done my research before I made my decision and that I knew the risks associated with my decision. 

It was not until participating in the Silent Protest that I was finally able to begin to grasp the extent of this crisis in SA. 5:45 am on Friday, I was standing outside my dorm waiting to meet the other international girls. We walked to the gym where we were to meet at 6am (conveniently, no one told us that the protest started that early...). After getting our shirts, we sat down waiting to hear what the day would hold. 

The leader of the protest, Larissa, started with thanking everyone for taking a stand against sexual violence. The Silent Protest is the largest student protest for any issue in the whole of South Africa. She began to list rape statistics in South Africa. A few of them include:

-SA government crime statics report that more than 66,000 rapes are reported in SA each year 

-HOWEVER, most rape survivors never report the crime to the SA Police due to victim-blaming and secondary victimization. (Meaning the rapes per year are way more than 66,000).

-For rapes that are reported, only 4% are successfully prosecuted. 

Needless to say, I was taken aback hearing those statistics. For the protest, everyone involved got a purple shirt to wear that had the SA Rape Statistics on the back. There were three kinds of protestors today. The solidarity members, which were mostly men. Their shirts had a handprint that read "the power to stop sexual violence is in our hands". The silent protestors (which I was involved in) wore shirts that read "sexual violence = silence". Part of being a silent protestor was having your mouth taped shut all day. The symbolism was to speak out against the silence that surrounds sexual violence. 

Finally, the last participants were the rape survivors. They wore shirts that said "rape survivor" all day long. They were the ones who taped the silent protestors. 

The day was extremely moving to say the least. After being taped, all protestors (nearly 1500 in all) march through the streets of Grahamstown raising awareness and making a statement that we, the Rhodes community, will no longer put up with sexual violence. 

We spent the entire day going to classes wearing our shirts and our tape. It was truly amazing to walk into a lecture and seeing half the class wearing purple with their mouths taped shut. 

At 12:30 we had the "die-in". Though typically held outside in the quad, due to rain, we all gathered in the hallways of the main administration building, where all the protestors laid down on the ground. It was explained to us that we were the living memorials for all the women, children  and men who have died from sexual violence.  Larissa said that we were the faces of the faceless, a remembrance for those forgotten. We spend an hour just lying in the hallway. No one spoke, no one moved. It was at this moment that the gravity of the situation was finally bestowed upon me. 

While it would be so easy to just say that rape and sexual violence are South African problems, that is a naive statement. I decided to look up RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network), which is the largest anti-sexual violence organization in the States. Here is a picture of current US rape statistics:

The night ended with "Take Back the Night" at the cathedral in town. We all walked hand-in-hand down the streets of Grahamstown to the cathedral. 

Once inside, we all got candles and filled the church. We were given food (WOOO!) and got to hear stories from survivors and supporters. Stories ranged from rape by brothers, fathers, friends, uncles, aunts, babysitters, and strangers. Some were fresh wounds while others were years, even decades, old. There was so much love and greif. It was one of the most over-whelming nights I can ever remember. 

Here is a video made last year about the silent protest. It is 15 minutes long, so dont feel that you need to watch all of it but it does provide an interesting account of why there is a protest and what it is all about.