On rape, many men have failed but women won’t

Her brother’s 28th birthday was on a Thursday, so the choice of venue was obvious – Rock night at SteakOut, on Lumumba Avenue. She was in her third year at university and often hang out with her brother and his friends, who called her ‘kid sis’.

That night, as you would expect of most birthday celebrations, everyone had a little too much to drink. It was a fun night but she had an exam the next morning so she asked to leave at about 1am.

One of the brother’s friends offered to drop her at the hostel, saying that he too had a presentation to nail the next morning. They said their goodnights and left.
But he didn’t drive straight to her hostel. He drove to an abandoned road in Kasubi, and raped her. Her brother’s friend; her ‘big bro’.

More than a year later when she told me this story, because I kept probing to know why she wasn’t graduating the same time as everyone. She had been unable to do go through with the exams that semester, because of that harrowing experience. I then asked what she had done about it – police? Her brother? The rapist? “Nothing”, she replied – apart from a broken spirit, living through it alone, mostly angry at and ashamed of herself.

I didn’t ask “why nothing?”, because I knew the answer. Investigating allegations of rape and sexual assault isn’t as straightforward as learning the alphabet so the odds are always stacked against the victim. But we know one thing for sure – that rape is predominantly caused by men – because it exists within a system that puts men at the top of the pyramid. So that’s where we need to start, and not policing, blaming and preaching to women. They don’t rape themselves.

To blame the victim is to subvert the course of justice, especially seeing as the first thing you learn about justice, when you are powerless, is that it is out of reach. You could get evicted from your land by a well-connected thief, defiled or sold into marriage by your father if you are a minor, battered by your spouse, or assaulted and raped by your boss, uncle or friend.

You might run to police and court – out of procedural requirement or because you are hoping for some comeuppance – but if you are a rung or some below your aggressor in the socioeconomic power structures, you know that the fight is usually over before it even starts.

This inability to deliver justice to the common man, usually because crime is perpetuated by the powerful and mighty, is the reason why everyone with some power down the stream, uses it however they like. Inevitably, those who choose to fight back have at times needed to resort to unconventional and not-so-legal methods to find some form of justice.

Which explains the spirit and emergence of movements like #MeToo and the social media name-and-shame campaigns targeting alleged rapists and sexual offenders. They are borne out of the powerlessness of victims and the inability to find justice and dignity before established systems.

So you might not agree with them but you can and should understand where they are coming from. These campaigns and movements would be pointless if the systems created to offer justice did what they must. But they don’t; so what now?

The danger, as has been rightly argued, is you might have cases where innocent people suffer collateral damage from false rape and assault accusations. That’s to be expected even in legally constituted systems – as Kizza Besigye found out when government of Uganda showed up with a certain Joanita Kyakuwa, to falsely accuse him of rape.

This is exactly why those who are concerned about being falsely accused should be working and exerting pressure on the police and courts of law to style up and do their job.

Fix the justice system and make it work for everyone – accuser and accused, especially with the understanding that for the latter, presumption of innocence is as important as the former’s search for justice.

That said, there is a whole generation of young men being raised by single mothers, for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that their fathers are deadbeats who failed to own up or raise to the occasion. Depending on where you stand, this can be a good or bad thing.

My prediction though is that they will be more respectful of women – an entirely great thing.
Happy New Year!

Mr Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds.
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