Hon Chairperson, South Africa has failed and is still failing to protect its women and children from violence.
It is gut-wrenching to have to admit that our country has the highest incidence of rape in the world, but even more sickening is the fact that a quarter of sexual offences involve children aged between nought and 10 years of age. Chair, 500 000 rapes are committed annually in South Africa. This means that a woman in South Africa is more likely to get raped than educated! This is a great shame for any country.
The origin of this problem can only be a lack of education on sexuality and HIV itself. In this day and age in South Africa, how can we still be battling with the myths associated with HIV, with boys and men believing that they will be cured of HIV by raping a young child, the virgin cleansing myth; with their blaming their behaviour on a patriarchal system as a result of apartheid; with their believing that sexual harassment and forms of sexual coercion are normal male behaviour; and their believing that it is not violent to force sex upon someone they know?
What this shows is that our country is failing its people and that we as a nation do not have moral fibre.
There is a blatant lack of respect for women and children, and there is a blatant lack of education on HIV. We know only too well that those who are not educated act negligently towards themselves and others because of their own ignorance.
In a survey conducted among 1 500 school children in the Johannesburg township of Soweto, a quarter of all the boys interviewed said that "jackrolling", a term for gang rape, was fun. Furthermore, more than half of those interviewed insisted that when a girl says no to sex she really means yes.
We live in a society in which 10% of men condone a man's beating a woman, and a quarter of them believe that a woman does not have the right to say no to sex. Of South African men who know somebody who has been raped, 16% believe that the rape survivor enjoyed the experience and had asked for it.
In a study led by the Medical Research Foundation in Gauteng province, more than 37% of the men had raped a woman, and 7% of them had participated in a gang rape. The SA Police Service estimated that only one in 36 rape cases was reported and of those only 15% culminated in a conviction.
The statistics are vast and horrifying. The psychology of our women and children is being crippled. We cannot even measure the consequences thereof.
Hon Chairperson, the IFP would like effective education on HIV and rape to be its foremost concern. It is long overdue. [Time expired.] I thank you.