- In 2006, the first year of the protest, the South African Police Service estimated that only 1 in 9 survivors reported the incident to the police.
- By 2014, this statistic had become 1 in 25
- If we consider that 62 649 sexual assaults were reported in SA last year this would equate to an estimated 1 566 225 sexual assaults in South Africa in 2014
Many survivors are afraid of not being believed, of being blamed and shunned, of being interrogated, retraumatised, labelled or pitied.
- Was she drinking?
- Did she lead him on?
- Was she walking alone at night?
Attitudes and beliefs in societies which judge the victim/survivor more harshly than the perpetrator are powerfully silencing.
Reporting
Survivors are aware that there is little chance of achieving justice even if they do report. State service providers do not always respect the rights of rape survivors and fail to comply with norms and standards set out in national legislation and policy: around 6.5% of reported rapes in SA are successfully prosecuted and less than 0.5% of perpetrators will serve any jail-time.
Justice and Secondary Traumatisation
Originally the protest focused on raising awareness - the protest was an overtly political, consciousness-raising project.
Today, the focus of the protest has shifted towards creating a healing space where all protesters stand in solidarity with survivors and work to resist and challenge the silences surrounding rape and sexual violence
Creating Awareness and Solidarity
Victim-Blaming and Stigma
What do we mean by a culture of silence?
Research on the harm of rape shows us how rape is, by its very nature, silencing, insofar as a rapist treats his victim as lacking in agency and as something whose feelings and experiences need not be taken into account. This treatment amounts to a denial of subjectivity.
- “Victims of human-inflicted trauma are reduced to mere objects by their tormentors: their subjectivity is rendered useless and viewed as worthless" - Susan Brison
- "To derivatize is to portray, render, understand, or approach a being solely or primarily as the reflection, projection, or expression of another being’s identity, desires, fears, etc… The derivatized subject exhibits (and, I would argue, experiences) a particular kind of subjectivity—a subjectivity that is stunted, or muted... [The derivatized woman’s desires, actions and choices] are required to mirror nothing but the desires of men. Beyond those desires, a derivatized woman cannot exist, cannot speak, and cannot act." - Ann Cahill
- "The self is at once denied and, by the totality of this denial, stilled, silenced, overcome" - Ann Cahill
The Rhodes University Silent Protest is the biggest protest against rape and sexual violence in South Africa and is unique worldwide in its carefully planned, two day programme of events. Over the eight years that the Silent Protest has been held at Rhodes University, it has grown from 80 participants in its first year to 1700 on Rhodes campus in 2014.
Why is it called the 'SILENT' protest?
The primary purpose of the Silent Protest is to draw attention to and challenge the culture of silence around sexual violence in our country.
- Rape and sexual violence as silencing acts
- The difficulty of constructing a narrative of the experience
- Victim-blaming and stigma
- Justice for rape-survivors and secondary traumatisation
- Failure to report
Survivors of rape and sexual violence face a number of challenges when attempting to construct a narrative of their experience of rape and sexual violence under political and epistemic conditions that are not supportive.
These challenges include:
- An absence of adequate language and concepts with which to understand, articulate and explain their experiences
- Narrative disruptions at the personal, interpersonal and social levels
- Hermeneutical injustice
- Canonical narratives that typically further the harms experienced by survivors
Rape and sexual violence as silencing acts
The difficulty of constructing a narrative
The Silent Protest