‘Corrective’ Rape Campaign Dominates the Press

Yesterday we reported about the victory of Luleki Sizwe, a tiny group of lesbian activists based out of a safehouse in the townships of Cape Town that started an international fight against 'corrective rape', whereby men rape lesbian women to 'turn' them straight.

In just three months, their call for South Africa's justice minister to take action on 'corrective rape' became the most popular Change.org petition of all time, attracting what amounted to more than 170,000 supporters in 163 countries.

Then yesterday those same township activists walked into the halls of South Africa's Parliament and convinced some of the most powerful officials in the country to agree to the long term, sustained engagement of various government arms and civil society groups to research, develop and implement a national action plan to tackle 'corrective rape' and the intersecting issues of gender-based violence, anti-LGBTI violence and hate crimes.

In short: we demanded that the South African government take 'corrective rape' seriously, and they have agreed to do so... and then some! Click here to read how it all went down or click here to view a slideshow of yesterday's events.

Now, as further evidence of how this campaign has taken 'corrective' rape from an unspoken epidemic to a national discussion, the campaign is all over the media.

The Associated Press made clear the campaign had been the driving force in getting the government to pay attention to the issue. "Activists are pushing the ministry to set up a commission to research, develop and implement a national plan to address sexual violence, violence that targets lesbians and gays and hate crimes," wrote Thandisizwe Mgudlwa, in an article which appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Seattle Times, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Fox News, MSNBC, Forbes, Yahoo! News, MSN, Salon.com, Reuters, IRIN (the UN's news agency), The South African Government News Service, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Mail & Guardian, Ghana Nation, the Times Union, San Francisco Examiner, the Canadian Press, Metronews, the Spanish news agency EFE, Australia News, Taiwan News, an Indonesian paper and even a Finnish tabloid!

The Sowetan (one of South Africa's largest dailies) said "200 members of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights groups protested outside Parliament yesterday, calling on Justice Minister Jeff Radebe to stamp out "corrective rape" against them." South Africa's New Age said "more than 100 individuals gathered outside the parliamentary precinct to demonstrate in support of Luleki Sizwe’s demands for the minister to set up a commission to research, develop and ­implement a national plan to tackle sexual violence and hate crimes."

CNN is working on a feature story on 'corrective rape' and the campaign was featured in the most popular article on Time Magazine. It was covered recently by Dan Rather, Current TV, the Sunday Argus (Cape Town's biggest weekly paper),

I spent the day with Ndumie Funda, founder of Luleki Sizwe, who was just thrilled by all the coverage.

To reiterate: in just 100 days, a tiny group of township activists managed to mobilize more than 170,000 people from 163 countries and got the highest levels of government to address their basic demand: that ‘corrective’ rape be taken seriously. Let's enjoy the moment!

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