When six men appeared in court in the Northern Cape town of Upington for the rape of a nine-month-old girl on Monday, some 3,000 protesters demonstrated outside demanding the reinstatement of the death penalty for the alleged attackers.

 

“South Africa has reached a new low…it’s one case of many,” said Kelly Hatfield, director of a group called People Opposed to Women Abuse (POWA).

 

“A lot of it is to do with the myth that a man will be cured of AIDS by having sex with a virgin, and how much more virginal can you get than a baby?”

 

Instead of decreasing with more AIDS education, the myth had taken hold in South African society, she said.

 

South Africa already has the world’s highest incidence of rape.

 

Three days before the nine-month-old was attacked last week, a three-year-old was raped, allegedly by her grandfather. In the same week a 14-month-old was assaulted by her two uncles.

 

Police statistics reveal that 21,000 cases of child rape or assault were reported in the past year. Most were committed by male relatives of the victims.

 

With one in nine South Africans living with HIV-AIDS, sexual assault was often a death sentence for the victim, said Glenys van Halter of South Africa Stop Child Abuse.

 

One of the nine-month-old’s attackers was believed to have the virus, said van Halter, who visited the victim’s family.

 

Van Halter said that while the AIDS myth was fuelling the increase in child abuse, unemployment, poverty and alcoholism also played a big part.

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