Good day. This will be a relatively short post exploring the drama that resulted following r*pe allegations at Rhodes University, South Africa. I'm going to look at a single accusation, and it will be up to you to decide whether the accused is guilty or not. As we proceed, I'd like for you to keep the following questions in mind:

is Stuart a sincere social justice warrior?

did the protestors act correctly?

did the university react correctly?

is Stuart guilty?

was justice served

Enjoy!

Background

Rhodes University is located in Eastern Cape, South Africa. It is known for its journ*lism department, as well as for its involvement in the annual National Arts Festival. Grahamstown, which is the name the university is found, has a history connecting it back to early colonialism, and it is the home of the Old Provost military prison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Provost

South Africa has been dealing with a r*pe epidemic for decades. Though you may be aware of this, you may not be aware of just how severe the problem is. By the time you finish reading this post, 2 to 3 South African women would have been r*ped.

• In 1998, one in three of the 4,000 women questioned in Johannesburg had been r*ped, according to Community Information, Empowerment and Transparency (CIET) Africa

• the South African police estimates that a woman is r*ped every 36 seconds

• According to the World Population Review, South Africa had the highest rate of r*pe in the world at 132.4 incidents per 100,000 people in 2010, but had decreased to 72.1 in 2019–2020

• More than 25% of a sample of 1,738 South African men from the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape Provinces admitted to raping someone when anonymously questioned in 2009

• a 2007 survey by CIET found 60% of both boys and girls, aged 10 to 19 years old, thought it was not violent to force s*x upon someone they knew, while around 11% of boys and 4% of girls admitted to forcing someone else to have s*x with them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_in_South_Africa

There are many causes behind this. It is believed that patriarchal customs are to blame, as well as a general cutlure of violence that pervades the country. There are also superstitious beliefs surrounding r*pe and its ability to cure HIV/AIDS. Additionally, some believe in "corrective r*pe" to cure lesbianism.

Predictably, universities are not safe from this epidemic, and campuses become hotspots for r*pe. One day, the women at Rhodes University decided they had had enough.

#RUREFERENCELIST

In 2016, a group of women decided to name and shame men. They posted a "reference list" online of men they were accusing of r*pe. The name, of course, an allusion to a university list of citations.

Following this they swarmd the men's dormitories, grabbed the men, and took them to a second location where they were intimidated. This was followed by days of protests. Women took to the streets naked and faced police intimidation.

https://rosiemoteneblog.wordpress.com/2021/04/21/an-ode-to-the-rureferencelist-movement

Do you agree with these actions?

#RUREFERENCELIST fallout

Due to pressure, the university made immediate changes.

>When #RUReferenceList happened, the university's management was forced to acknowledge there was a problem. Within 24 hours, responding to student demands, the university had committed to increasing the capacity of the harassment office and to relying more on “external prosecutors” in sexual violence cases. It said it would improve staff sensitivity training and set up a task team to strengthen its response to sexual violence. The task team would later make more than 90 recommendations.

https://mg.co.za/article/2018-07-06-00-rureferencelist-the-fear-of-repercussions-still-lingers

Nevertheless, the protest very much struggled to gain support from wider society. Many of the main complaints surrounded the unfairness of public r*pe accusations, and the violence associated with the protest.

>Much of the conflict around the protests, especially between university management and protesting students, revolves around one thorny matter: the credibility of the list. Mabizela described the reference list as “damaging” and “unconstitutional”. Despite this, students continued protesting, calling for the named men to be suspended. The university refused, saying it could not suspend them until they had been found guilty of misconduct.

>Months later, Rhodes said that none of the men who had been removed from their residences after being named on the reference list had been found guilty of sexual misconduct, “even after thorough investigations by the university and the National Prosecuting Authority”.

The named men faced very little repurcusions from the university, though the allegations were investigated. The women involved were immediately subjected to disciplinary action. An interdict forbidding further protests was also put into place.

>Management has argued that the interdict was a last resort: invoked to prevent the threat of violence on campus, if students take the law into their own hands. But none of the men on the list rounded up on the night of Sunday 17 April was physically harmed in any way, some escaped quite easily from the angry crowd, ran away, or simply walked off. They were not beaten up, nor injured. And, unlike the protesting survivors, they enjoy the continued right to walk through campus without question, police investigation, or arrest.

https://www.ru.ac.za/perspective/2016archives/deborahseddon.html

But what about the people involved? The men who were named, what became of them? I'd like to look at one man's story.

Stuart Lewis

Here is a picture of Stuart and his partner.

Stuart Lewis had everything going for him. His list of awards and achievements is significant. He has notable credits as a filmmaker and journ*list, eventualy becoming Editor in Chief of a Rhodes University newspaper.

https://thembilewis.wordpress.com/curriculum-vitae

Additionally, he's also a staunch feminist and social justice advocate. His middle name is Thembsile. He spells woman with an x. To find out more about him, visit his blog.

https://thembilewis.wordpress.com

He literally wrote anti-r*pe articles

No matter how quick you are to champion women's rights or how hard you come down on the perpetrators you are aware of, there will always be someone, somewhere who holds power over another person and who is not afraid to abuse that power.

>The other thing we need to be honest about is the fact that we can do little in the immediate future to stop sexual violence. This is one of the hardest lessons I learned over the few years I helped organise the Silent Protest in Grahamstown.

>What we can do, however, is change how we as individuals handle, talk about and intervene in the systems that excuse or explain away gender violence.

https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/you-cant-stop-gender-violence-over-these-16-days-but-you-can-stop-excusing-it

Lastly, he is married to poet Mishka Hoosen. I know that at one point he converted to Islam and practiced polygamy, but I do not know if that is still the case. I am also aware that his spouse transitioned and now identifies as a transmale. This is what he has said about the relationship:

I cannot find any verification tha the two are still together.

Stuart and the reference list

Stuart was accused of r*pe. In response, he wrote a long piece online. I highly encourage you to read the whole thing but I'll post some key quotes. In short, he claims he is innocent, yet he does not want support from men's rights activists. Here are the most important points:

It would be easy to simply state that I have never been found guilty of such a crime, but the reality, as any r*pe survivor knows, is that r*pe is under-reported and difficult to prosecute, and therefore relying on just that fact would make me complicit in the r*pe culture pervading our criminal justice system. It would also be an insult to r*pe survivors who have been unable to secure convictions, because it would amount to a denial of their lived experiences.

By denying culpability and insisting that my right to a presumption of innocence be respected, I will be invoking language which may trigger r*pe survivors and reinforce the system that alienates them. I know that there are so-called Men's Rights Activists who would be eager to turn me into some kind of poster child for their belief that men are regularly “falsely” accused. I reject any such attempt. If you're sending me support because you fall into that category, please don't. I want nothing to do with your kind.

To this end, the only response I can offer in all conscience is to deny that I have done anything which warrants my inclusion on such a list. I do so knowing that this accusation will remain in the ether for the rest of my life, and knowing that I can do very little about that, without forcing an accuser to go public and to court and, in doing so, put herself on trial. I also do so knowing that any harm which this has done to me personally, to my relationships with my wife, family, friends and employers, is a fraction of the trauma incurred by r*pe survivors whose experiences of abuse, more often than not, go unbelieved.

That being said, if my accuser wishes to pursue an investigation through systems that are less destructive to r*pe survivors and have proven track records of finding justice for r*pe survivors when the system has failed them, I will cooperate absolutely and without question. To my knowledge, such organisations include the Human Rights Commission or the Equality Court, or alternatively organisations like Access to Justice who regularly handle mediation in these matters.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170307121321/https://www.facebook.com/thembi.lewis/posts/10154134671559878

The fallout for him was massive:

>The allegations have turned his life upside down, his employers have placed him on leave of absence, and many of his friends who worked with him in the area of gender violence have “stepped away”.

A writer who looked into his story following the reference list had the following to say:

>He is is, by all accounts, an intersectional, cisgender millennial man. He spells women “womxn”, he has a Xhosa middle name, he is Muslim, he appears to grasp white privilege. He is a part of the national Fallist movement. He talks the talk, he walks the walk.

However, it is worth noting that others have said that he uses social justice language to cover his misdeeds:

>Even after the Reference List came out he wrote a letter using the right language which managed to get even hardened feminists to side with him. I met some of his victims and one thing they said was that he was an incredibly manipulative person

https://x.com/naledimashishi/status/1355047310137450498

Stuart also continued to defend himself in an interview with that journ*list, stating the following:

>“It is hard for me to say why. A few years ago there was an allegation against me, it was investigated but the result was that there was nothing to pursue. There are people with axes to grind against me. I have not been the best boyfriend in the past. I have lied, cheated and been manipulative. I may be young and I may have been a kak boyfriend but I am not a male feminist,” said Hoosen-Lewis.

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymaverick.co.za%2Farticle%2F2016-05-02-jaccuse-life-after-the-rureferencelist%2F

No formal legal charges were laid against him. And that's the story of Stuart Lewis. A seemingly ordinary guy who had his life turned upside down by a r*pe allegation from an anonymous source. Someone posted his name online accusing him of r*pe and just like that he will forever be known as a male feminist. Try searching his name online and the only thing that comes up is r*pe allegations and this whole fiasco.

Conclusion

Stuart wasn't the only one who had their upturned of course. One of the accused was the son of a Harare mayor. The father had this to say regarding the allegations:

https://www.sundaynews.co.zw/suspended-harare-mayors-son-in-university-s*x-storm

Another accused, Kudzi Nzombe, seems to be doing well for himself and is currently the CEO of a sports company.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kudzanayi-nzombe-0676b774

So, what do you think? Is Stuart a male feminist?