It is a great pleasure to come and speak, seeing that all the parties have agreed with this Bill. I really do thank members ... well, I like smiling [Interjections.] ... particularly Mike here. Thank you very much for supporting this Bill and we have not put politics before it.
Clearly, the House is unanimously of the view that this legislation is still vitally important to give guidance on issues of sentencing in our society. Members have quite correctly, and particularly Dr Delport and others, highlighted the one issue in the Bill that should be discussed properly and that is that in the case of rape we have created and placed certain limitations on the discretion that may be used in that regard. Obviously, this will go to the Constitutional Court, but it is for us to argue strongly why we have to do this.
I think we are starting to analyse the statistics around rape and there is a very scary trend that is starting to develop. We now find that more than 50% of rapes in this country are actually perpetrated on girls younger than 16. The perpetrators are in 80% to 85% of cases people older than 18. We are getting grown-ups targeting children and we see it in the newspapers. Young kids are being raped. The problem is that the extent of it is enormous.
If we as legislators do not do something about this, wouldn't it be right for our people to ask questions about it? I am prepared to put my head on a block on this issue, although there may be some difficulties with what we doing, to argue to the court why we are doing it. We have tons of court cases. The women's organisations have brought it to us and said: Here is a problem. Look at what the judiciary is doing in terms of their perceptions of rape in this society.
If one judicial officer said it, I'd say: Okay. But what worries me, for example, is that if you rape your daughter, your niece, your stepchild that there is a quite broad acceptance amongst judicial officers that that is somehow a lesser crime. We had a judge here in the Cape who specifically said in one case, where the stepfather had raped the daughter, that this was not really a problem because it was all done within the family and therefore it's not from outside. It is very scary, with the deeper inner socialisation of people coming out when they write judgments, particularly on sentencing.
We argued when we introduced minimum sentences that the one thing that minimum sentences are going to do is not necessarily that more people are going to get higher sentences. What it does is that it forces judicial officers to put their reasons on paper why they don't want to give the sentence. What we are seeing, I submit, is rather scary.
One of the cases mentioned is the Nkomo case. I want to read to you exactly what the judges have said. These are two senior judges in the SCA that have said this. This is a case in which a woman was forced upstairs, raped; the chap then went downstairs to drink in the bar. She then jumped out the window from the second floor. He grabbed her when she landed in front of the bar, took her upstairs, raped her four more times that evening, assaulted her, forced her to have oral sex with him, she escaped the next day and the High Court gave him a life sentence. The judges said this - why they did not want to give a life sentence:
In this case the appellant did not use any weapon, although he did assault the complainant. He did not seriously injure her though he callously and cruelly disregarded her injury caused when she tried to escape from the hotel room. I emphasise in particular the brutality with which the appellant treated the complainant - raping her four times after she had been injured ...
That's after already raping her once -
... trying to escape from him; that he forced her to perform oral sex on him, assaulting her when initially she refused; that he showed absolutely no remorse; that he was in a comparatively better position than her with education and a permanent job. He should have known. He behaved like a sexual thug. That said, I do not believe that this crime should attract the heaviest sentence permitted by our law: life imprisonment. I recognise that it may be difficult to imagine a rape under much worse conditions, but it is possible. And I consider that the prospect of rehabilitation of a 29-year-old and the fact that the appellant is a first offender must be regarded as substantial and compelling circumstances.
The two judges then gave 16 years to this man, instead of life imprisonment. The other judge, who gave a minority judgment, says this ...