FROM Racism, Guilt, Self Hatred And Self Deceit: A Philosopher’s Look at the Dark Continent by Gedaliah Braun (2010):

I have long suspected that the concept of rape cannot mean the same in Africa as elsewhere. And now (over the Internet, MSNBC Home), I find this from Newsweek (“Breaking The Silence”, by Tom Masland, dated 9 July 2000; emphases in original):

According to a three-year study [in Johannesburg] … more than half of the young people interviewed – both male and female – believe that forcing sex with someone you know does not constitute sexual violence…. [T]he casual manner in which South African teens discuss coercive relationships and unprotected sex is staggering.

Masland is stunned by blacks’ behaviour, asking ‘Why Has The Safe-Sex Effort Failed So Abjectly?’ Well, aside from their profoundly different attitude towards sex and violence and their intense libido, a major factor has to be their diminished concept of time and their inability to think ahead, resulting in a ‘just-don’t-give-a-damn’ attitude.

Nevertheless, I was still surprised by what I found under ‘rape’ in the Zulu dictionary: Act hurriedly; …. Be greedy. Rob , plunder, … take [possessions] by force. The ‘problem’, of course, is that there is no mention of sexual intercourse! In a male-dominated culture, where saying “no” is often not an option, ‘taking sex by force’ is not part of their mental calculus. Furthermore, rape clearly has a moral dimension. To the extent that Africans do not consider coerced sex to be wrong, then, by our conception, they cannot consider it rape; because rape is bad, and if such behaviour isn’t bad it isn’t rape.

But why don’t they think coerced sex is wrong? Insofar as there is no option of saying no, then from their perspective, it isn’t really forced; and to the extent blacks are deficient in moral consciousness, they will have difficulty in understanding that even unambiguously coercive sex is wrong in the first place. Either way, there seems no place for our notion of rape.

[…]

In an article about gang rape in the UK (June 2004) in the left-wing Guardian, there is a quote from a young black woman, speaking of black men (emphasis added): “The thing is, they don’t see it as rape, as us being forced. They just see it as pleasure for them. Us, we’re slags.” Add this to the discussion below, and we have references to the same phenomenon amongst blacks in America (‘running a train’), Kenya (‘collections’). South Africa (‘jackrolling’, ‘collections’) and the UK, indicating a remarkably consistent pattern of behaviour.

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