Wife rape is also known as marital rape or spousal rape. It is a husband's sexual intercourse with his wife by force or without her consent. It is a form of sexual abuse and one of the veritable forms of violence against women across the globe
A United Nations report on global women’s rights published in 2011 showed that most countries in the world have not explicitly criminalised marital rape despite the growing awareness that it is a violation of women’s rights and an issue of gender equality.
“We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go, “Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile who was then executive director of U.N. Women, the global body’s agency that published the report, stated. “And even where the laws exist, the implementation and enforcement of those laws can be poor — even in the most progressive countries.”
While the global situation may look bleak, that of the Continent of Africa is terrible, to say the least. African women are daily, victims of spousal rape but nurture their grief in silence and in secrecy as social norms and religious beliefs coupled with the absence of appropriate legislations make it impossible for them to seek redress.
The traditional belief that when a woman marries, she submits herself body and soul to the husband and abdicates any right to say “no” to her husband’s sexual advances, still holds sway in Africa and most men in Africa consider it a paradox of sort to talk about marital rape.
Even religion is used to justify marital rape. The major religions practised in Africa (Christianity, Islam and African traditional religion) seem to have injunctions that enjoin women to submit sexually to their husbands and these are ready sources of reference by men to justify marital rape. Amazingly, many African women buy into this hypocrisy and narrow interpretation of religious injunctions to accept and even expect such dehumanising acts from their husbands.
Given such a cultural, social and religious milieu in Africa, it is not surprising that of the over 50 countries in Africa, only 12 have criminalised marital rape. Even in those countries, the will to prosecute offenders is often lacking. South Africa for instance, criminalised marital rape in 1993 but it wasn’t until 2012 that the country recorded its first conviction for marital rape.
Consequently, marital rape is generally condoned or at best ignored in many African countries. Women are left to bear the brunt of marital rape which statistics has shown, is accompanied with violence that is sometimes worse than that of stranger rape. While rape by a stranger is highly traumatic, it is typically a one-time event. Marital rape, on the other hand, is rarely a one-time event, but a repeated if not frequent occurrence.
Many African wives bottle up this hurt and the only time they get to talk about it is when they are in court to seek divorce. In many divorce proceedings, evidence is often given by housewives about their husband obtaining sex from them by violence and sometimes subjecting them to sexual acts they consider disgusting or unnatural. Yet, safe from divorcing the man, there are few legal instruments for punishing such men.
Poverty is a further hindrance to crying out or seeking redress for marital rape by the African woman. A lot of women in Africa are not economically empowered being housewives who depend on their husbands for survival. The fear of being thrown out of the house and made to fend not only for herself but her children is enough to cow even the bravest woman.
African women also fear that they will be ostracised by family and friends if they take legal action against a sexually abusive spouse. This fear is not unfounded. For a society that does not believe that a man can rape his wife, such women who speak up and take action against marital rape are seen as rabble-rousing shrew that is better avoided.
In circumstances as these, women prefer to bear the hurt of marital rape in silence. But it is one silence that is not in the interest of Africa. Legislative activism should be encouraged across the Continent to ensure that marital rape is criminalised. Mass enlightenment programmes by government agencies and NGOs should be promoted to teach wives about the negative influence of sexual abuse by their husband and the need to report cases of such abuses to appropriate authorities. It must be emphasised without reservation that by getting married, the African woman does not trade away her right to liberty, self-determination and physical dignity.
