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Beatrice Tonhodzayi-Ngondo Make a difference
A woman best understands how important it is to choose who one gives her body to.
There is no greater intimacy than that of sharing one’s body with another person. In romantic books, movies and real life, this act is often extended as an expression of deep love.
Even according to Biblical teachings, only two people who have committed to each other in love and marriage should be able to share such intimacy.
Even in cases where one of the two people is playing the other, it is known that they will at least fake it so that the other party, usually the woman, opens up enough to let them share her body.
No woman will give her body to a man who tells her outright that they are only interested in her body and nothing else.
Except in cases where sex is paid for, and has become a means of exchange, one has to woo and court in order to get the woman’s body.
As a friend of mine likes to say, “the sexual act between two consenting adults is a covenant.”
For this reason, she strongly feels that people should guard against sleeping with just anybody lest they enter into covenants with all manner of people.
It is that deep.
It is that serious.
That is why everyone deserves the right to choose who they want to sleep with and enter into some form of covenant with.
When a woman is raped, the worst form of murder is committed.
That is the most violent act, apart from killing, that any man can perpetrate against a woman.
With murder, the pain, horror and anguish is for those who stay behind. With rape however, the survivor has to live with the horror for the rest of their life.
There is counselling, yes, and even Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) to minimise the risk of contracting HIV if the survivor is attended to within 72 hours of rape, but nothing takes away the fact that when one rapes a woman, they literally kill her.
No amount of washing and scrubbing can take away the thought of being with someone who is not of one’s choice.
No amount of comforting by loved ones can take away the pain and at times stigma that comes with rape.
It is for this reason that some incidences of rape will go unreported.
It is for this reason that some girls and women will marry their rapists. They just want it to go away.
I asked a couple of male colleagues if they would stay with their wives or girlfriends if they were raped the other day.
To my dismay; most of them said they would not. Some said they would prefer not to be told.
This did not make sense to me considering that many men today love or fall in love with women they know have been sexually active before or are actually sleeping with someone currently.
So what then is the difference with someone who has been raped?
That is the complexity of rape and how it is viewed in our society.
Instead of getting support from everyone around, the survivor (who is the rapist’s victim) is actually stigmatised. Our systems right from the family, community, church, police and the courts are not supportive enough.
As we celebrate the landmark ruling where the Supreme Court awarded a Chegutu woman damages for pain and suffering incurred when she was raped and impregnated by robbers eight years ago, there are plenty of lessons to be drawn from this case.
The woman did not receive PEP and emergency contraceptives. She went on to carry a child for nine months and has been raising this child since then. This is a pregnancy she did not want or plan to have.
This is a baby she did not plan on having.
All this goes against the motto and slogans we are running with as a country, that every pregnancy should be wanted.
The system let her down. Pregnancy is hard enough as it is.
It is a difficult time where hormones can play havoc with a woman’s body and senses.
But because of the promise of a baby, women bear it.
The support of a loved partner or family as a woman carries the pregnancy makes it all bearable.
Imagine this woman after being raped, by robbers, of all people (strangers, who were there to steal and destroy) having to carry the offspring of such an attack.
Some will argue that the one who allowed conception in this instance (God) has a plan for the child and that may be so but as a society, we need to rethink.
With rape becoming a daily occurrence, this case should serve to show us that when girls and women are raped, they are literally murdered.
When people ask where and what one was wearing when they got raped, we are killing the victim even more.
When the police do not respond fast enough and put the victim through hell with their questioning, we kill the woman again, when the courts do not send rapists off to rot in jail, women die a little bit more.
When we do not administer PEP urgently, we commit murder. And families and communities, when we do not support the raped girl or woman and ostracise her, we kill her even more. When we marry a girl off to her rapist, we doom her.
When we negotiate with rapists, we become just like them; murderers!
As President Mugabe has said, rape is wrong. It is the worst form of violence one can perpetrate against a girl or woman.
No girl or woman should have to go through that. Make a difference by getting the message and standing firm against this evil.
Online Reporter