Send clear message that abuse's wrong

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THE scourge of rape in our country is getting out of hand and sadly we're not doing enough to address this barbaric act.

The Sunday World's front page lead story was about a gospel star who allegedly impregnated a 15-year-old. That is statutory rape, yet human rights groups are quiet about it. We should stop buying his music and stop attending his shows to show that we do not want to be associated with rape and rapists.

I often see outrage when we hear about the most brutal cases, but as government and the country what are we doing to avoid rape? We have a lot of potential rapists whose thinking we need to change.

There are a lot of young people who believe that when you spend your money on a woman, you're entitled to her body, and even though it's her body, she has no say simply because she benefited from you financially. We should be strategising on how to deal with such cases.

We should be pushing the minister of basic education to introduce a curriculum on sex education and masculinity.

As males we should not use our power to inflict pain on our women. Unfortunately we're not taking the fight against women abuse seriously in this country.

For instance as much as I don't care about Tokyo Sexwale divorcing, the allegations of abuse by his wife, Judy, should be taken seriously. The media should leave no stone unturned in this one.

Whatever they uncover should be taken to the authorities and Tokyo should clear his name in court. If he's got a case to answer, President Jacob Zuma should suspend him until the case is concluded.

In that way we will be sending a clear message that abuse of women will not be tolerated in our country and everyone is equal in the eyes of the law, be it an Old Brown sherry drinker in rural areas or a prominent businessman who is a cabinet minister, the law will apply equally.

We need to understand what leads to rape and what is it that each of us can do to stop this barbaric act. Everyone who has a son should ask themselves: what am I doing to make sure my child doesn't turn out to be a rapist or an abusive man.

As a father of a girl, I cannot wait until it happens to my child before I act. Let's do our best to protect our women and children.