The spread of rape spells madness in the Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo is notorious for brutality and violence - and especially rape and other sexual assaults committed by soldiers. Alarmingly, the rapists are no longer confined to the military. A study released by Oxfam says that in 2008, 38 per cent of the rapes reported across the country were committed by civilians as compared with less than one per cent in 2004.

To explain the spread of sexual violence in the civilian population, it is important to question first of all why it is so prevalent among soldiers. For this is where the sexual violence has so far gone unchecked.

Within the Congo there is no government legal structure that is either effective or that has the recognised support of the various constituencies. Without a protective authority - or, in psychological terms, a potent father - there are few restraints to curb violence and aggression.

The situation is similar to an individual lacking a healthy superego that prevents him from falling prey to destructive impulses.

The result in the Congo seems to be the proliferation of gang affiliations that maintain their own authority through fear and intimidation.

Many of the country’s soldiers have had to witness extreme violence. They have also been forced by superiors to commit acts of violence and been subjected to violence themselves. To survive all this psychologically, they have identified with the aggressor and adopted the norms of the gang culture.

When feelings of hatred, fear and aggression become mentally overwhelming, one way of trying to get rid of them is by eroticising them. The soldier who rapes is actively triumphing over the weak, frightened and defenceless part of himself, as projected onto his victim. The sadism involved in this act becomes exciting and addictive in itself and is adhered to increasingly as the ego becomes more and more frightened and endangered.

This has nothing to do with sexuality; it has to do with a way of expelling violent feelings that cannot be contained within the self into another.

It is also possible to see sexual violence as the soldiers' reaction to feeling castrated and powerless. The fact that rape has become so widespread suggests that it is rapidly becoming part of a process of mass institutionalisation and normalisation within the different factions fighting one another.

The civilian population is even more impotent than the soldiers who are fighting when it comes to protecting themselves.

Just as there has been an increase in the incidence and severity of sexual violence committed by soldiers, it should be no surprise that there has been a steep rise in civilian rape.

When husbands and fathers witness the rape of their wives and daughters and, increasingly, have been raped themselves, they too are at risk of being infected by the hatred that has been passed on to them. In their impotence, civilian men may be attempting to reclaim some sense of power, however illusory, by inflicting pain and punishing those who are weaker than themselves. Vulnerability is attacked as a way to destroy feeling.

Violence is traumatic in any form and its victims often perpetuate and incite further violence, inflicting what has been done to them onto others. This is the case regardless of whether it is institutionalised violence or domestic violence.

When there is a culture of such violence it inevitably pervades the cultural psyche and permeates into domestic relations where it can be even more destructive in its long-term damage to family structure and future generations. What we are seeing in the Congo is just this - that at the most fundamental level, love between men and women is being perverted into hate. When this begins to happens, the culture is truly in danger of becoming mad. ·