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Screenshot of Facebook messages between Judge Mabel Jansen and activist Gillian Schutte
Facebook via The Washington Post
A South African High Court judge is under heavy scrutiny for comments made about black culture and rape, saying that rape is a pastime for black people, the Washington Post reports.
According to the report, the Facebook rant is from an exchange between activist Gillian Schutte and Judge Mabel Jansen that occurred about a year ago. Schutte went public, the Post notes, to expose the “deep racism and colonial thinking” that still plague South African society.
Jansen, the daughter of a former governor-general of South Africa during the apartheid era, sent the messages last May.
“In [black people’s] culture a woman is there to pleasure them. Period. It is seen as an absolute right and a woman’s consent is not required,” Jansen wrote in one of her messages. “I still have to meet a black girl who was not raped at about 12. I am dead serious.
“The white people have a lot to account for. But this? I feel like vomiting,” Jansen continued. “So no—the black people are by far by far no angels. Their conduct is despicable.
“Murder is also not a biggie. And gang rapes of baby, daughter and mother a pleasurable pass time [sic],” she said in another post. “They are simply now in a position to branch out and include white women.”
On Wednesday, South Africa’s minister of justice, Michael Masutha, announced that Jansen had been put on “special leave” following outcry from all sides of the government and other judicial officials. According to the Post, the Women’s League of the African National Congress blasted Jansen’s comments as “purely racist and misrepresentation of facts about black culture” and questioned her ability to properly preside over rape cases in court.
The Post notes that the emergence of Jansen’s Facebook comments has brought attention to her other past comments, including a 2013 interview in which she downplayed her grandfather’s role in supporting apartheid and claimed that her own professional journey in South Africa was almost as hard as any black person’s because she is a woman. Jansen even said that there is an “apartheid between men and women.”
“I believe I know what hardship means,” she said in the interview, according to the Post. “I know what it is to be in a disadvantaged position.”
Read more at the Washington Post.
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