Dr. Christine Blasey Ford

It was a heart-wrenching experience to watch Dr. Christine Blasey Ford tell her story to a panel of Senators. It was a story that is all too common in our modern world, a story of how two athletic near-adult boys trapped her in a locked bedroom and, in a semi-drunk state, attempted to rape her. The actions of one of them were accompanied by exhortations to ‘get it on!’ by the other. She, a terrified fifteen-year old girl, feared for her life and for her physical safety. Those fears were well justified, in a situation in which two stronger males were exploiting their strength and size, and her weakness. She managed to escape, but today still bears the mental scars of that assault, and those scars were ripped open in the last weeks by the callous disregard of the mental suffering she has been through for all of her adult life. She has been accused of making up the story.

No-one who witnessed Dr. Blasey Ford telling her story could doubt the suffering she endured at that time, and still endures today, nor could they doubt the huge courage it took for her to tell her story, in the interests of her country and of Humanity, unless, of course, they had a political agenda that demanded that the story be a falsification. It was even more distressing to those who have endured the vilification of politicians and their tame media when telling a story that is not politically correct.

The story of Dr. Blasey Ford had a parallel in the story of Jacob Zuma, the man who became the President of South Africa and proceeded to loot the country, to destroy the Constitutionally-mandated protections of law and justice and the rights of the citizens. Zuma was accused by a young girl, the daughter of a close friend, of raping her. She was of a similar age to Dr. Blasey Ford at the time of the rape. Zuma was found not guilty of rape, in a verdict that has been questioned by noted jurists, after a trial in which the ANC cadres demonstrated their hatred of the girl seeking nothing more than justice. She received death threats and vilification, although she was the victim of a crime that should have been banished from civilized society centuries ago, a crime that holds that the man has an automatic right to abuse the body of his victim purely as a consequence of his greater size and strength. That young girl went on to live a life of suffering, and, last year, she committed suicide, unable any longer to bear the hatred of the people who refused to believe that she had not consented to the rape.  Zuma saw the process as a great victory for him. It was not a victory for the people of South Africa. It was the start of an intensification of the regime of rape and assault of women and girls, some as young as two years old, almost always without consequence to the perpetrators. The incidence of rape in South Africa now runs at one rape every two and a half minutes! Under the Apartheid regime, for all of its faults, rape was by law a capital offence, drawing the death sentence. Under the current ANC government, for all the supposed excellence of its Constitution, it is treated almost as a minor misdemeanor, to the extent that a man accused of raping a woman was released on bail of R400 (about $26), while the same Court granted bail of R5000 to a man (falsely) accused, in his capacity as Director of a company that released an amount of nitrous oxide gas, without causing any injury or damage.

Even more serious than the damage caused to the young psyche of Dr. Blasey Ford is the fact that the Senators hearing the story told by her, which she decided to tell in order to protect her society from the serious danger that might be brought on the American people by the elevation to senior office of one of the perpetrators of the vicious assault, were visibly not interested in the truth of the matter, but only in the political consequences of it. As a Supreme Court Judge, that man would be in a position to hand down judgments that could have destructive effects far beyond the immediate case, yet the Republican Senators seem to be willing to overlook the serious charge on the basis that it was her word against the candidate’s word. They were willing to accept that view without taking the trouble to require an in-depth FBI investigation of the event. Of course, it is entirely possible that such an investigation could show that the candidate is innocent of the charge, and of the further two similar charges that have been made against him, but it is equally possible that the investigation would show is guilt. In pressing ahead, ignoring the suspicions that must arise from the claims of three credible witnesses, the Republican Senators are putting the interests of their Party above those of the nation. Just as the ANC did with Jacob Zuma, with predictably disastrous results for tens of millions of citizens. One is constrained to ask whether this action is an anomaly, in a country supposedly dedicated to democracy and the rule of law, or is it a normal event, blown up in the glare of public attention? One wonders. In South Africa, the (mis)trial of Jacob Zuma and the love shown for him by his Party was soon to result in a plundering of the State on a grand scale.

Probably the most prominent outcome of the Hearing in which Dr. Blasey Ford told her story in the glare of international television, was the patent honesty of this woman, the doubts she had about the effects it would have on her and her family, and the integrity she showed in telling the story. It was a demonstration of the finest and most important attributes of a good citizen – she was willing to put aside her personal interests in an attempt to avoid a huge mistake being made by the American Administration. She is a woman who has become an icon of the civilization all good people strive towards, a woman who has earned the unbounded admiration of the world.

One can gain hope, from the courage of Dr. Blasey Ford, that her action is equivalent to the flapping of the wing of a butterfly, a seemingly insignificant event in the grand scheme of things, but one that will precipitate the hurricane of reversion to the old and proven values of honesty, integrity, courage and good citizenship throughout a world that seems to have a lemming-like impulse to rush headlong over the cliff of personal ego, personal pride and political ambition.