Married women who do not
want to be raped by their husbands should avoid sleeping in the bedroom, a
senior member of the Swaziland Royal family said.
Princess Phumelele Dlamini,
a Swazi Senator, made the comment at the Director of Public
Prosecutor’s office during a consultative meeting with the Senate Deputy Prime
Minister’s office portfolio committee.
The Princess, along with all other Senators in
Swaziland, is not elected but appointed by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan
Africa’s last absolute monarch.
The Swazi
Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by the King, reported on Friday (6
April 2018) that the Princess, ‘said
in the event a wife was not in the mood to engage in sexual activities they
should not sleep in the same room as their husbands so that they don’t find
themselves in a tricky situation.
‘She said long ago Swazi
women would go back home in the event they were faced with such problems in
their marital home.’
The newspaper reported her
saying, ‘Do not allow him to touch or play with you because he might think you
are playing hard to get.’
In traditional Swazi
culture women are treated as children who are owned by their menfolk (usually their
husbands or fathers.) They have no legal rights.
In October 2017, four
in six married women interviewed by a newspaper in Swaziland said their
husbands had the right to rape them. The Swazi
News reported some wives said their husbands deserved sex whenever they
wanted.
The newspaper did street interviews in the Swazi
capital Mbabane. The women appeared to have been chosen at random, but the
newspaper did not reveal how this was done.
A Sexual
Offences and Domestic Violence (SODV) Bill is stalled
in the Swazi Senate because traditionalists object to four clauses about incest, unlawful stalking, abduction and flashing.
The newspaper reported, ‘With or without their
consent, some women believe their husbands have a right to “rape” them.’
It added, ‘The reason given by four women out of the
six interviewed was that part of their wifely duties was to provide sex to
their husbands at all times.’
Silindelo Nkosi, the
Communication and Advocacy Officer for Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse
(SWAGAA), told the newspaper that forced sex within a marriage was recognised
by international conventions that Swaziland had signed as a crime.
However, the SODV Bill runs counter to tradition and
culture in Swaziland. The Indigenous Law and Custom of the Kingdom of
Swaziland, a document from 2013 that
clarifies traditional law states that rape is committed only if the woman
forced is not the man’s wife or lover.
It is not known how man husbands force themselves on
their wives but recorded figures on rape have shown Swaziland to have the
fourth highest rate of rape in the world. In
2015, a report from a US organisation ABCNewspoint stated there were 77.5 registered cases of rape
among 100,000 people.
In 2015, a survey conducted
in Swaziland suggested four in 10 women believed a husband was justified in
beating his wife because he was the head of the household.
The APA news agency said at the time a demographic health survey called the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey
Comparative Report gave a number reasons for wife-beating which included;
‘if she refused to have sex with him, if she argued with him, if she went out
without telling him, if she neglected the children and if she had sex with
other men’.
APA reported, ‘Silindelo
Nkosi, the Communication and Advocacy Officer for Swaziland Action Group
Against Abuse (SWAGAA) said, “These beliefs of justifying abuse have increased
to the worst rate resulting in more young women dying in the hands of their
lovers or husbands.”’
It added, ‘Clinical
Psychologist Ndo Mdlalose describes this as an abusive mentality where men also
tend to claim they are correcting their women by beating them.’
In June 2008, it
was reported that the National
Democratic and Health Survey found that 40 percent of men in Swaziland said
it is all right to beat women. The same year, the United Nations Population
Fund (UNFPA) found that the status of some women in Swaziland is so low that
they are practically starved at meal times, because men folk eat first and if there is not
enough food for everyone, the women must go without.
See also
‘OBSERVER’
NAMES ANOTHER RAPE VICTIM
SEX
BILL HIGHLIGHTS CULTURE ISSUES
IN
SWAZILAND, CHILD RAPE NOT UNUSUAL
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