South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged men to unite against rape and sexual assault in the country, calling it a “national crisis”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Women were being raped and killed on a continuous basis and it was time to end gender-based violence, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He made his impassioned plea while launching an election manifesto for the governing African National Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some 40,000 rapes are reported every year, though this is thought to be only a fraction of the real total.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president asked men in the packed Durban stadium, where tens of thousands of supporters watched his speech, to stand to show their condemnation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We have made huge strides in improving the position of women in society… However, gender-based violence is a national crisis that we are determined to end, so that all South African women and girls may live in peace, safety and dignity, ” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The emancipation of women requires a change in attitudes and the material conditions that perpetuate the oppression and marginalisation of women.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He outlined a number of measures to achieve this, including harsher sentences for perpetrators, and “better skilled” police and prosecution authorities “to improve the capacity to investigate and prosecute all crimes”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It is important that children learn from a young age to respect one another as equals and not to resort to violence in situations of stress and conflict.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, his speech sought to mark a clear break with a decade of drift and misrule under his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, BBC Africa correspondent Andrew Harding reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Ramaphosa promised competence and honesty – barely addressing populist issues like land reform – and focusing instead on ways to tackle rural poverty, and the world’s highest rate of youth unemployment, our correspondent adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South African police recorded 40,035 rapes in the 12 months leading to 31 March 2018, an average of 110 each day,\u00a0the fact-checking organisation Africa Check reported last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This represented a slight increase on the previous year, which saw 39,828 recorded rapes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged men to unite against rape and sexual assault in the country, calling it a “national crisis”. Women were being raped and killed on a continuous basis and it was time to end gender-based violence, he said. He made his impassioned plea while launching an election manifesto for the governing African National Congress. Some… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2883,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875\/revisions\/2883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}