Among the contributions to civilization of South Africa since the end of "apartheid" – the common shorthand for white rule - is the phenomenon known as "child rape." You really have to hand it to the South Africans. No other nation seems to have invented this particular kind of atrocity before, and in the country where it originated, it's flourishing.
Rape in South Africa in the last few years has indeed taken off. In 2000, there were more than 52,000 cases reported, and Interpol says that "South Africa has in recent years had one of the highest per capita rates of rape and sexual assault in the world," according to the New York Times. [NYT, January 29th, 2002, Grappling With South Africa's Alarming Increase in the Rapes of Children PAY ARCHIVE] But "child rape"—violent sexual attacks on females under 18—is a specialty that appears to be unique. About 40 percent of the 52,000 rapes in 2000 involved victims under 18; 20 percent involved victims under 11.
One reason for the sprouting of child rape there is yet another idea unique to South Africa—the notion that having sex with a virgin is a cure for AIDS. Since AIDS also has exploded since the end of "apartheid" (along with unemployment, murder and terrorist attacks on white farmers by blacks), raping young females—including actual infants—has become almost commonplace. One doctor interviewed by the New York Times counted more than 200 child rapes in 2001 in his locality, "mostly girls ages 7 to 9."
Last October six men were arrested for raping and sodomizing a nine-month-old baby. "No one knows what accounts for the disturbing trend," bleats the Times.
Well, actually, some people do know. It turns out that the child rape epidemic is all part of the legacy of "apartheid." "The researchers investigating child rape," the Times reports, "say they cannot close their eyes to the lasting impact of the apartheid system, which legitimized violence and oppression for decades." It's not just the researchers. The political establishment itself in the New South Africa makes the same claim.
"As we all know," preaches the country's deputy president, Jacob Zuma, "the apartheid history of this country left behind a legacy of a serious breakdown of the moral infrastructure of our society." One of the researchers into child rape, Saths Cooper, also blames "apartheid"; South Africa, he intones, is "a society that has come out of an abyss."
As a matter of fact, South Africa has fallen into an abyss. Child rape—along with AIDS, other kinds of rape, murders, and terrorism—were all either unknown in South Africa under "apartheid" or under control. Indeed, today, police won't even release statistics on rape committed prior to 2000. It's only in the New South Africa—the democratic South Africa, the anti-racist South Africa, the progressive South Africa—that the abyss started swallowing the country whole. The blunt truth is that South Africa was far better off under "apartheid" than it is today or than it promises to be ever again.
What has happened in the New South Africa is not only the enthronement of ideologies alien to it but also the legitimization of the savagery that "apartheid" repressed and controlled. No doubt superstitions such as the belief that sex with a virgin cures AIDS existed under "apartheid," but because the savages dumb enough to believe it and act on it were kept under restraint—by laws that regulated the physical movement of blacks, kept them out of cities, required them to carry passports, etc.—the superstition didn't matter much. Now—with the triumph of "freedom"—it does matter.
Indeed, one feature of the New South Africa that also contributes to the rape epidemic is the collapse of law enforcement itself. As the Times also reports, "Rape victims still wait hours for an ambulance or police car to take them to the hospital. Sloppy investigations mean that rapists are usually free to terrorize their victims over and over." Yet another legacy of "apartheid," of course.
It occurs to no one in the South African government—or for that matter at the New York Times—to suggest that blaming "apartheid" for every failure and atrocity that happens in South Africa is merely an evasion of the truth, with about as much merit as a juvenile delinquent blaming his parents for being too permissive. But of course no one can speak the truth about what is happening in South Africa without discrediting the whole case against "apartheid."
What is happening in South Africa today—indeed what has happened all over Africa since the withdrawal of the European empires in the 1960s—is exactly what defenders of "apartheid" always insisted would happen: the victory of savagery over the civilization that the white empires imposed. What was once the most economically and technologically advanced society on the African continent now lurches into the abyss created by egalitarians—and no one in its government or in the world press dares say why.
COPYRIGHT 2001 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
February 11, 2002
