The law [magistrate maybe?] sure is an ASS!
Everyday – and I mean everyday – I read about rape cases and am eerily reminded of South Africa being touted over the years as the “rape capital of the world.” Our courts are no doubt kept busy by this violation, but there is one particular case that got me questioning the wisdom of the courts that perhaps evoked emotions and images of Sharia-like dispensation of justice as some know and prefer it.
In a story headlined “Teacher to do community service for statutory rape” [Chronicle, 11 January 2010], it was reported that a 39-year old Mberengwa teacher “was in a relationship” with a 14-year old Form Two pupil and had sex with her on several occasions. The teacher was sentenced to 105 hours of community service.
Here is how “the relationship” began: The teacher proposed love to the 14-year old, and forced the minor – the court admits this is minor despite the sentence handed out – after he confiscated her blouse while she was doing her laundry at a local borehole. To make mattes worse, the school head discovered “the affair” but took no action against the paedophile!
The teacher pleaded for leniency with the court saying he wanted to continue serving as a teacher and was his family’s breadwinner. Believe it or not, this worked with the magistrate – female for that matter!! I’m still trying to understand why as this does not hold for mitigation for a crime that serious. Who can challenge the postulation that here is serial schoolgirl rapist in the making? Send him back to class and he is your typical recidivist, what with his daily interactions with the 14-year olds and also knowing from experience that he get nothing but a slap on the wrist for his roving eye? The law is an ass, and it is people like this magistrate who assify it!
The only “consolation” I guess is that the State has appealed against the sentence at the High Court, but it does show there are many things wrong with the application and interpretation of the law in Zimbabwe in dealing not only with rape cases but certainly across the whole criminal justice gamut.
No activists with sandwich boards demonstrating against such sentences? Who will protect these young girls from these randy savages whom they look up to in loco parentis? And obviously one has to ask the position or policy of the Ministry of Education on teachers who rape their students and tell the courts they “deserve the court’s leniency” because they love serving the country as teachers. It stands to reason that it’s not the teaching they love!