Evidence in Rape Cases in Four Southern African Countries

Evidentiary rules applicable to rape and other sexual offence cases, inherited from nineteenth-century England and based on Victorian notions of women's behaviour, are alive and well in twentieth-century southern Africa. These are the cautionary rules which require a trial judge to warn him or herself of the danger of convicting a rape accused without corroboration, or independent evidence supporting the testimony of the complainant. These rules are applied because the evidence of the complainant in a sexual case is considered to be “suspect”: she is variously said to be prone to lie for reasons of her own, prone to fantasy, and prone to exaggerate. Although the cautionary rule of corroboration is still applied in many countries, most progressive and feminist thinkers consider them to be “a lingering insult to women”. In this article I will canvass the cautionary rules on evidence in sexual cases in southern Africa and attempt to show that they are not only based on outmoded stereotypes, but are also particularly unsuitable to southern Africa

Criminology · Plaintiff · Political science · Suspect · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Legal Issues in South Africa · Psychology · Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies