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Join the Circle, Break the Cycle

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Join the Circle, Break the Cycle Join the Circle, Break the Cycle Davis Project for Peace 2013: Nyanga Township, Cape Town, South Africa Adair Kleinpeter-Ross, Barnard College, class of 2014 Shilpa Guha, Barnard College, class of 2013 Context: The inception of this Davis Project for Peace comes from the epidemic of rape cases in South Africa. The local police in South Africa estimate that a woman is raped every 36 seconds in South Africa.1 In a recent study, more than a quarter of men in South African men admitted to having raped someone, and 46% said they had committed rape more than once.2 Many of these cases are fueled by two myths. The virgin-cleansing myth is a belief that having sex with a virgin will “cure” an HIV-positive man of the disease; not only does this lead to the rape of girls and infants, it continues the spread of HIV, a disease that is already rampant in South Africa.3 Corrective rape is another myth that has vicious consequences: corrective rape is the belief that raping a lesbian or bisexual woman will “cure” her and make her become heterosexual.4 Cape Town is home to a large LGBT population, and it is there that lesbians are increasingly targeted for “corrective rape,” often by large gangs of men. It is estimated that ten lesbians a week in Cape Town are raped, although this estimate may be lower than the actual figure, as most lesbians do not report their cases for fear of being attacked again by the police.5 The high rates of rape in South Africa are a legacy of apartheid, both as a symptom of poverty in black areas and as a result of the disenfranchisement many black men continue to feel. Despite the end of apartheid, the post-apartheid vision of equality has failed many, and has created a cycle of poverty, violence, and rape that is extending into the next generations; of men surveyed in South Africa who admitted to rape, more than 73% had committed their first assault before the age of twenty.6 Nyanga township, an historically black area of Cape Town, is one of the poorest townships, and has the highest rate of violent crimes (including rape). It is for this reason I would implement my program in a high school in Nyanga. The Project: Education and Mentorship: Connecting People for Peace The project will involve two components: Firstly, the project will provide a comprehensive, month-long sexual education program to ninth grade students (at a high school in Nyanga Township) that Adair and Shilpa will teach. The sexual education program will include a mix of co-ed and single-sex lessons that foster honest dialogue between and among the genders. The primary focus of the seminar will be on practicing safe sex, dispelling the “virgin-cleansing” and “corrective rape” myths, and on building self-esteem. The seminar will provide a safe, intellectual environment in which students can discuss the epidemic of rape in their community, as well as the means of its prevention. The seminar will also provide a series of guest speakers, including representatives from the LGBT organization, Triangle, to help dispel the corrective rape myth, local police officers to discuss the process of reporting a rape and the protective services available, representatives from the Desmond Tutu Foundation about HIV and STI screenings at the local Nyanga clinic. 1 Nicole Itano, “South Africa Begins Getting Tough on Rape,” WEnews, February 24, 2003, accessed November 20, 2012. http://womensenews.org/story/rape/030224/south-africa-begins-getting-tough-rape#.ULI0QeOe8oY 2 Megan Lindow, “South Africa’s Rape Crisis: 1 in 4 Men Say They’ve Done It,” Time, June 20, 2009, accessed November 20, 2012. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1906000,00.html 3 Nicole Itano, “South Africa Begins Getting Tough on Rape,” WEnews, February 24, 2003, accessed November 20, 2012. http://womensenews.org/story/rape/030224/south-africa-begins-getting-tough-rape#.ULI0QeOe8oY 4 Human Rights Watch, “We’ll Show You You’re a Woman”: Violence and Discrimination Against Black Lesbians and Transgender Men, (2011), accessed October 7, 2012, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/05/south-africa-lgbt-rights-name-only 5 Ibid. 6 Megan Lindow, “South Africa’s Rape Crisis: 1 in 4 Men Say They’ve Done It,” Time, June 20, 2009, accessed November 20, 2012. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1906000,00.html Secondly, the project will provide a mentorship program for fifty ninth grade students, twenty-five boys and twenty-five girls; the students will be self-selecting, and vetted with the help of the instructors at the middle school. The program will then match the students with fifty mentors from the local community, drawing primarily on university students and professors; the mentors will be selected through a comprehensive application and interview process, and will have proven to be committed to education and to positive change in the community. The female students will receive female mentors, and the male students will receive male or female mentors, depending on compatibility and the recruited mentors. Special attention will be paid to ensure that there is racial, ethnic, sexual orientation and gender presentation diversity among the mentors. The mentee/mentor pairs will meet at least once a week. The pairs will meet on school grounds for their first meetings, but may later apply for $50 grants to fund activities they undertake together, be it going out for lunch or buying a book they can read together and discuss. The sexual education class will allow the students to grow together as they discuss the presence of rape in their community and the ways that they can help solve the epidemic. The mentorship component of the program will allow the students to connect directly with their outside communities and see in their mentors models of healthy lifestyle choices, respectful attitudes towards women, dedication to education, and a variety of sexual orientations. These relationships will ideally continue beyond the life of the project, each providing a source of personal support, encouragement, and guidance for the student, and a gratifying connection to the youth of the community for each mentor. Project for Peace: This program aims to re-connect the community ties that have been severed through the cycle of rape in Nyanga Township, and to help connect people who been placed at odds by this cycle of sexual violence. It is by providing disenfranchised boys with meaningful mentorship from powerful women or strong, respectful men, that the cause of rape, namely, the dehumanization of women, can be addressed and reversed. It is by providing young, vulnerable women with older allies that the youth will gain the confidence to stay in school, make safe sexual choices, and protect themselves. Lastly, it is education and open discussion with the ninth grade students that will allow them to feel a sense of community and connection to one another, inspiring them to commit, in unity, to ending the cycle of rape. Personal Experience: Adair Kleinpeter-Ross wrote and implemented an original sex education program for a local Harlem middle school. At Barnard College, Adair runs a program called FemSex; she wrote over twenty lesson plans for this peer-facilitated seminar that fosters discussion about issues relating to female sexuality, including sexual assault and safe sex practices. She has been involved in numerous tutoring and mentoring programs, and has experience interacting and connecting with at- risk youth, as well as building programs that address the needs of mentors and mentees. Adair has authored papers on the subjects of corrective rape (and LGBT rights) in Cape Town, as well as successful sexual education models in Africa. Finally, a passion for women’s rights has underscored all of Adair’s extracurricular work, and will enable her to design and implement a program that is not only informative, but also truly empowering for the students involved. Shilpa Guha participated in several of Barnard's women's leadership initiatives, including the Baraza (Young African Women's Leadership Conference), Women in Public Service Project in Washington, DC, and the Global Symposium in Mumbai. She worked at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, and the UN and Geneva offices of WILPF (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom). She completed a thesis on UN initiatives to address sexual violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and hopes to further her scholarship and career in international law and women's rights. .
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