Child rape epidemic in Zimbabwe

This is a prime example of how a feeling of powerlessness leads to rape. I still don't understand how people can find children in any way sexually appealing. It's disgusting to me. I am fully in favour of castration in cases like these.

Shocking, mugabe has created a beast from the darkest recesses of the human mind, very sad indeed, its even sadder that some people support him, or is this not a zanu pf thing and part of the culture?

And this is why bob overthrew 'colonialism' 30 years ago. To create a top dawg elite, that plunder the country, and the people on the ground are child rapists.

I dont understand this. Regardless of feelings of powerlessness and a collapsing justice system, what about individual morals? How can people turn into animals overnight just because they can get away with it? I guess in times of anarchy all the scum come out of the woodwork.

What makes this more stange for me is that I was in Zim 5 years ago, and could not fault the Zim people on their friendliness and hospitality, not to mention the many cool Zims I've met in SA, its pretty hard to reconcile my experience with this article.

Great......and these are the people we are allowing into our beloved country. Now even our kids are not safe.

Rape is an expression of power, not sexual attraction. When power-hungry lunatics run the country and the army, the citizenry follow suit. You may use the same equipment to rape as you do to have sex, but the intention behind it is very, very different. Same thing with pots and spoons. I can use a pot and a spoon to cook and I can also use it to make one hell of a noise. No-one confuses the cooking with noise-making, irrespective of the equipment. So, this revolting situation in Zimbabwe is a consequence of ordinary people brutalised and brutalising. No-one walks out of a dictatorship intact. And _that_ is the legacy of the failure of SADC: we sacrificed millions of Zimbabweans for a lunatic dictator. We will all pay for this.

@ Set Lah - Comments like yours really make me upset. Rape has very little to do with power.....but simply a means of sexual gratification with an unconsenting person. The Nazis during WW2 were inhumanely power hungry.....yet they didnt rape their victims....they just killed them. However when the conquering Red Army entered Berlin they committed the largest mass rapes in history....
Dont try to justify the behaviour of sexual deviants.

where exactly is mail and guardian driving us to.People must not just paint the old man with a brush of brutality even when he has done nothing wrong. Some of us know Zim and we know everyone knows that some of these things are lies

moyo: Of course! Its all propaganda made up by the Brittish. Its all rosy in Zim. People are not being tortured, abducted or killed for supporting Mugabe. And all the Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa, are only here, because they enjoy your sunny weather.

Stop living in ignorance.

@Khalsa Singh. Set Lah is correct; rape is a form of excreting power over a victim. It is also a powerful, and disgusting, psychological weapon used during times of war. When the red army committed these mass rapes it wasn't due to sexual deviancy (Sexual Attraction) but because they could and wished to show the people in Berlin that they had been conquered. To use a computer game term "You’re owned". And to say that the Nazi's did not rape during WW2 is a very nave statement. I would pretty much guarantee that the crime of rape was committed by all armies participating in that war, or any other conflict for that matter.
There are some other pretty scary reasons for committing the crime of rape, as stated in the article above, but Sexual attraction is very low on the list. But if you wish to be an alarmist and suffer from xenophobia by painting all Zimbabweans fleeing the conditions in there country with the same brush, then go ahead and be a part of the problem. :)

and all comes back to AFRICAN Leaders --- 'raping'...

@ Gibson - rape is a perverse, violent sexual act, that culminates in what ????? a feeling of control/power or .....? Rapists do it cos they can....like the Red Army...the Nazis didnt have the sexual appetite for rape.

um, khalsa: the nazis were raping danish, norwegian and sufficiently blond polish women through the whole war. they needed as many wombs as they could possibly get for lebensraum. i can't believe you are talking such kak.

and really, as busy as south africans are busy raping their own children, i don't think they're going to notice their zimbabwean "competition".

@Khalsa, yes articles like this upset everyone who is okay upstairs but unfortunately Set Lah and Gibson are quite right. Psychological research has shown that the aspect of control/domination outweighs libido in the psyche of these perverted offenders... Anyway the whys of the crime do not make it any less disgusting... and perhaps to be a bit more objective about the whole crime issue, we here should be worrying about the situation here in SA and to see what i mean just quickly pop to the following link which outlines reported sexual offences in SA... Remembering it's estimated that perhaps as many go unreported... http://www.saps.gov.za/statistics/reports/crimestats/2009/categories/total_sexual_offences.pdf Based on reported cases only a sexual offence has been happening in RSA at a rate of about 7 per hour on average, with alarming consistency i.e. over a 6 year period, now are you really gonna pin that on people coming into the country? Bottom line is your children have never really been safe, mine neither and they won't be any safer if the government doe not stop turning a blind eye to incompetence as well as rewarding it with hefty golden handshakes to useless departing "public protectors" and the like. They need to decisively get a grip on the crime situation in the country.

@US Negro - Rape by the Nazis is not documented. Most Poles have more Nordic features than the Germans, but rape was not a documented account in Poland....it was just torture and death. Rape in the course of a war is acceptable to an extent, in the sense that men die and woman are raped by their new conquerers. Many civilizations were built on this, like UK and large swathes of Europe.

However, men rape out of lust, and not out of power. When they award Nobel prizes to Psychologists then I would consider taking their qualitative research seriously.

I can go ballistic when I read articles like these. It does not matter where it happens. What is going on in our society - where are our moral and ethic responsibilities. I literally want to get sick. How in Gods name can one even think about such a despicable act. Rapist should be shot on the spot.

Let's face the facts here, when elephants fight it is the grass that suffers more. For those who campaigned for sanctions against Zim I am sure you are so pleased that they worked. To those who hide behind the economic melt down as an excuse to torment others may we just pray and wish that the law will take its course. What a shame to all those in government who are doing absolutely nothing to alleviate the cries of these sufferers.

I wonder why Funganyi Dzvinyangoma ("Mr. I know all about Zimbabwe") does not comment on this horrible situation affecting innocent children who did nothing wrong to deserve this. Will he still blame it on the West and Tsvangarai?

I find it odd that the with level of rape cases reported in SA alone which is actually considered the rape capital of the world people like Khalsa have the audacity to cast the first stone. While this is deplorable and has nothing to do with politics but just lustiful individuals who cannot contain their urges to view this as being unique to Zimbabwe is sinking very low indeed. SA does not have political issues yet kids are raped to teach them a lesson, lesbians are raped to turn them and women are raped as punishment for wearing mini-skirts and trousers.

At least a Zanu PF legislator has proposed castration for any man convicted of rape and that's the way to go. We will not sit around and wait for those who like to feel good about themselves by championing causes they do not really believe in. There are those feel outraged by things that they themselves are doing only when they hear that someone else is doing it like Khalsa.

I was in agreement with you Khalsa until you started excusing rape in some situations as acceptable. Where do we stop if we say it's ok in certain situations? What if it was your sister or child?

By the way Betty Makoni was never forced but she is running away from an investigation by her Dutch sponsors into financial irregularities at GCNZ. This has nothing to do with Mugabe or ZANU PF unless the Dutch who haboured Tsvangirai before are now working with Mugabe. Dodgy people who commit crimes while abusing people's plight just need to say they are running away from Mugabe and the rest is history.

You have to wonder where this epidemic comes from? It wasn't like this 10 years ago? What happened? Is this the new African way... you just take?

Marius it has beeen around for a long time in SA but not as pandemic as it is now. Part of this is due to Inkonto Isiswe cadre - forgive spelling, coming back from the countries north of our border, where they picked up the idea that life is cheap and to be brutalised how ever they saw fit. The abuse of children in parts of Africa is well documented and it is not only prevalent in Zim but here as well. But as long as stupid people support dictators it will only get worse.