Lesotho - War on women

(MENAFN- The Post)

QACHA'S NEK -Her body is lying in the Qacha's Nek mortuary, awaiting autopsy, before her family can decide when to bury her.
The 38 year-old woman, who's name cannot be mentioned for ethical reasons, was murdered last week and her family says there were signs that she was raped.

She was a mentally retarded villager in Motse-Mocha, just outside Qacha's Nek town.
Her naked body was found by her relatives dumped by the roadside.
“I would be healing if she had died of an illness,” said Thabo Tlali, her brother.
“It is because she was not sick when someone decided to take her life that I feel I will not heal,” he said.

“I do not know if I will forget all that happened to my sister.”
Thabo told thepost that his sister was able to look after herself and did everything by herself despite her mental disability.
“I think the person who killed my sister raped her before and when he became aware that she had known him he decided to kill her to hide evidence.”

“We are not happy as the Tlali family and we want justice for our sister,” he said.
The councillor of Motse-Mocha, Hlaoli Motlomelo, said although he was not around when Tlali's body was found he was given details.
“This case is at the police station. Now they are working on it,” Motlomelo said.
“I hate what I heard and I am very disappointed with these bad things people are doing to other people,” he said.

Gender Minister Likeleli Tampane says it is time to put a stop to the scourge against women.
Speaking in parliament on Monday, Tampane said the Qacha's Nek incident of the mentally ill woman's rape and murder has left her shocked.
Tampane told parliament that on the same day, she was going to Koro-Koro where an elderly woman had been raped and killed.

“Sexual violence seems to continue taking the lives of women, grandmothers, girls and children in the country,” Tampane said.
She recalled a 2020 case in which a student at the Lerotholi Polytechnic was raped and murdered in Thabong.
This led to the Thabong villagers taking the law into their hands and killing two of the men they suspected of the student's murder.

Regarding the woman's rape and murder, the executive director of the Lesotho National Federation for the Disabled, Advocate Nkhasi Sefuthi, said this is one of the incidents which shows the high rate at which disabled women in this country are being raped and killed.
“The cases like this one are so many in our country because in our country disabled people are taken for granted and whatever they are saying is not taken seriously,” Sefuthi said.
“This, as a result, gives the perpetrators the chance to rape disabled people knowing that people will not believe them when they report the cases,” he said.

He said gender-based violence should come to an end and“the government should allow justice to be done to all people whether disabled or not”.
“We have many cases of women with disabilities who are being raped and killed, this is a big challenge in our country,” he said, adding“this is happening time and again because women living with disabilities are easy targets to the perpetrators”.

“Even in court their evidence is taken for granted, it is still not easy for people living with disabilities to be given justice because of the stigma accompanying their disabilities.”
“Justice must be served and it should not be delayed because justice delayed is justice denied,” he said.
The Qacha's Nek police commander, Superintendent Sibanda Thembankosi, said Tlali's postmortem will be done this week.
In 2020 Gender Minister Dr Mahali Phamotse said 90 percent of all male inmates in Lesotho's jails were convicted of rape.

The survey was conducted when Dr Phamotse was still Minister of Justice.
Dr Phamotse said this at the Validation of the Beijing +25 Lesotho Report in 2020.
The review sought to assess how Lesotho is progressing in its bid to achieve gender equality and empower its women.
Dr Phamotse said it was sad that in almost every ministry she has worked in, she has often come face-to-face with cases of women abuse and inequality.
“I started as the Minister of Education, and I saw reports of teachers raping their students ,” she said.

“I became Minister of Justice and it came to my attention that 90 percent of offenders are on sexual offence charges and now I am the Minister of Gender and the statistics are horrific.”
“This is very worrying and some level of commitment is required from all of us to put a stop to women abuse and inequality,” she said.

According to a United Nations study conducted in 2015, Lesotho has the highest rape rate in the world, with 61 percent of women reporting having experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives.
The country had a rate of 88.6 rape cases per 100 000 inhabitants in 2011, according to a UN report.
Lesotho has the sixth-highest murder rate in the world, according to a recent World Population Review report.
The global average murder rate is seven per 100 000 people, found the report, and Lesotho had a rate almost six times higher at 41.25.

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