MBABANE, 10 April 2007 (IRIN) - MBABANE, 10 April 2007 (IRIN) - Rape and physical abuse figures are rising year on year in Swaziland, but welfare groups say a decade of national debate on the issue is starting to pay off as more women and children are reporting crimes committed against them rather than tolerating the abuse without complaint.

"The rise in the number of abuse cases each year is not because there is more abuse going on in Swaziland, but the victims are more likely to report the cases. Before, they suffered and died in silence, and families and neighbours watched as children were being abused, without doing anything. That's changing," Hlobsile Dlamini, public relations officer for Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA), told IRIN.

When the anti-abuse nongovernmental organisation (NGO) began its operations in 1994, in the western commercial town of Manzini, the country's most populous urban centre, 35km southeast of the capital, Mbabane, the media and public opinion still questioned the very existence of abuse against women and children in Swaziland.

Many Swazis considered moderate wife beating a form of spousal discipline condoned by their culture; child beating was seen as not only normal, but even Biblically sanctioned.

Incidents of abuse against women and children that resulted in counselling, the relocation of victims in safe havens and arrests have risen about 50 percent annually since the first handful of cases in the mid-1990s.

SWAGAA figures show that among Manzini's 60,000 people the number of abuse cases rose from about 250 in 2004 to 350 in 2005 and to over 500 in 2006. "It is not necessarily a bad sign that the number of abuse incidents are on the rise; it represents better reporting," said Nonhlanhla Dlamini, Director of SWAGAA.

"It's the classic choice of perception: is the glass half empty or half full? I think it's half full. We had a lot of resistance, particularly from Swazi men, to the idea of curbing violence against women and children," said counsellor Sarah Ndlovu.

"Some men equated the concept of gender equality with female superiority, and said Swazi women would become undisciplined, unfaithful and disloyal. Such distrust is often the seed for violence against women," said Ndlovu, who works out of a Manzini clinic.

The crime of rape has been the easiest to address because opinions against the act have long been united in the press, public and national leadership. In the late 1990s, rape was made a non-bailable offence, and rape leading to death became a capital offence.

Another indication of a shift in public attitude is the debate on corporal punishment in schools. By law, teachers are permitted to cane students in the classroom but the practice has recently become the topic of heated debate in the press and on school boards.

"The drought is also raising awareness about child abuse. We have several reports of children selling themselves for food. In the past, this practice was known amongst starving unemployed women who came to town to find work, and became desperate when no jobs were forthcoming. Today the drought is making a new generation desperate, particularly children, who have lost parents and caregivers to AIDS," said Ndlovu.

SWAGAA credits the police for the rise in reported abuse cases. From a time when police dismissed complaints from beaten wives as 'domestic matters' and incidents of incest and child abuse were covered up by family members ashamed and fearful of exposing 'tibi tendlu' (house garbage) to the world, police have come round to viewing abuse survivors as the victims of crimes, and the perpetrators as criminals.

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