ANC Women’s League stands firm on chemical castration for rapists

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The ANC Women’s League has again proposed chemical castration as a punishment for rapists and will ask the governing party’s national policy conference to approve the idea during the plenary session on Sunday.

The proposal was made by the league’s delegates to the social transformation sub-committee during commissions at the conference, after the idea was rejected at the ANC’s last policy conference in 2017.

National executive committee member Lindiwe Sisulu, who chaired the commission, told a media briefing on Saturday night that the proposal had been revived by female delegates partially as a response to the series of horrific attacks on women over the days leading to the conference.

Sisulu said that delegates were “proposing chemical castration still as one of the ways to deal with rapists,” in particular those who had committed aggravated rape.

Sisulu said delegates had initially proposed physical castration, but this had been “toned down” to chemical castration, which had been rejected in 2017 at the conference but was now being revisited.

Delegates had proposed that discussions be held with the medical fraternity about the effectiveness of the process and how it could be administered so that “we can be clear that we are talking about the same thing.”

Delegates believed that chemical castration would prevent rapists who had been released after serving their sentence from raping again.

Sisulu said that despite the idea having been previously shot down, it would be presented again.

“We will have to wait and see.”

Other proposals included legislative changes to ensure that rapists could not get bail and a change in sentencing protocols to make sure that those guilty of violent rape would not be intergrated back into society.

Sisulu said delegates wanted the education department to look at introducing curriculum items to assist in teaching young boys to respect women and as a means of shifting the male mindset away from the use of gender-based violence.

Gender-based violence, Sisulu said, was “one of South Africa’s most common crimes”  and had reached a point where the question had to be asked what had gone wrong in the socialisation and education of boys and young men.

She said the bulk of discussion had been “emotional” because of the impact of the gang rape of eight young women at Krugersdorp on Friday and other recent crimes against women, which had occupied the bulk of the three hour session.

Sisulu said the commission had affirmed the need to have 50-50 representation of women in all levels of ANC structures.