One in three children in Swaziland is sexually abused. This news came out in April 2008 and I wrote about it at the time. The Swazi media gave some coverage to the report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) that contained the statistic and then moved on to other stories.
This is a great pity because the report on child abuse is shocking and is an indictment of Swazi ‘culture’. Large numbers of the abused children were raped by their own fathers or other family members (75 percent of the perpetrators of sexual violence were known to the victim).
I think one of the reasons why the Swazi media have not made more of the news of child sex abuse is that journalists in Swaziland are not very good at telling stories. The coverage in April was based on an official report and a media release that accompanied it.
Journalists have little skill (and possibly little inclination) to explain further what a human tragedy such statistic reveals. It is only by getting behind the statistic and explaining what child sex abuse means in human terms that readers can begin to understand the true consequences of such abuse to the victims.
All of which brings me to the latest edition of Kaleidoscope magazine, a relatively new publication in Swaziland that comes out once every two months.
Its current edition (July/August 2008) contains an account of a young woman (now aged 18 years) who, along with her two sisters, was systematically abused by her father. All girls gave birth to babies as a result of their rapes by their father.
Kaleidoscope interviews the girl who describes in minute detail her experiences at the hands of her abusive father. As I said earlier, Swazi journalists are not good at story-telling, but Kaleidoscope shows how it should be done. The article simply allows the girl to tell her own story in her own words. The girl’s account is ‘dramatic’ enough and requires (and receives) no embellishment from the writer.
Swazi journalists are fond of telling readers that something is ‘shocking’ or ‘horrific’ even when it isn’t really. Kaleidoscope avoids telling readers what to think and allows them to make up their own minds. There is also a refreshing lack of moralising in the account. Again, readers can make up their own minds about what they think of the sex abuser.
Below is an extract from the Kaleidoscope article. Some readers may find its contents distressing. I am sure it is no comfort to you to learn that this extract is quite mild compared to some parts of the article that I am not reproducing.
‘When I was five years old, often before I left for school my mother would be comforting my two sisters who would be crying after coming out from my father’s bedroom where he had raped them. My sisters would scream from inside the bedroom and mother would hear their cries but continue with whatever she was doing whilst tears flowed down her face. When she was comforting them she would say she is sorry that father had to punish them this way but they should know she is ‘trying’ to help them. She warned them not to run away because they would suffer worse if they did so, as they would be eaten by wild animals.
‘One of my sisters stabbed herself on the stomach one day after emerging from an ordeal with father. She was pregnant and she would complain that she does not want the baby. At first she tried running away but the police found her and brought her back home. Father gave her a thorough beating and that’s when she decided to commit suicide. After she stabbed herself, father ordered her locked up and not given food, still punishing her. She died two days later and we buried her around the same week, without reporting to the police. Then the abuse turned on me.
‘I remember mother ordering me to take food to father who was in the bedroom. She said father had sweets for a child who listens to him. When I got to the room, he said we should share the food and I ate not knowing what would follow. He embraced me and lay me on the bed. He pushed up my dress and raped me.’
The child was so badly injured by the rape that she was unable to walk.
The rapes continued for years and eventually her parents banned her friends from visiting the house. When the child and her sister screamed in pain during the rapes, neighbours were told the children were being punished by their father.
In time the child had three babies and her sister at least one baby by her father.
Eventually, police arrived at the family home to arrest the father for the rape of a six-year-old girl in the neighbourhood. The mother fell sick and died at about this time.
‘Mother’s funeral was more than just a funeral it was judgement day. The whole family turned against us thinking we were framing our father for incest. Nobody believed us when we said father had sexually abused us and that our babies were his children. Our only witness was dead and it was hard to prove. Some community members who had suspected the situation at home supported our tale including our mother’s best friend who said our mother did tell her what was going on.’
Police said there was not enough evidence to prosecute the father so he was allowed home.
However, police took the sisters to a half-way home for abused children and their babies were taken to an orphanage.
The father remarried and raped his second wife’s seven-year-old child. He was prosecuted and is now serving a 26-year jail sentence.
The sisters are still at the half-way house receiving counselling.
Kaleidoscope is published by Knotell in Swaziland.
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