While the perpetrators of the xenophobic violence in South Africa have not differentiated based on gender or age in their attacks on foreigners, there is a gender perspective to xenophobia getting lost in the midst of the horror.

Foreign women in the townships have been disproportionately affected by the recent xenophobia, not only because the violence has played out on the site of their bodies (through beatings and rape), but also because the violence has been directed towards their homes (through burning and looting).

At the same time, within South Africa's undisputedly patriarchal society, women have also been thrust into the conflict as a real and potential source of violence between South African and foreign men. Again and again, we hear South African men accusing foreign nationals of "stealing our women."

There have been reports of rape in the midst of the general perpetration of xenophobic violence. Systematic rape is often used as a weapon of war in "ethnic cleansing." Although South Africa is not at war, it current situation could be considered a "conflict situation" and in a conflict situation, the sexual violation of women can erode the fabric of a community in a way that few weapons can.

Rape in conflict situations serves to dominate and tame not only the women survivors who are its immediate victims, but also all the men that are socially connected to them by delivering the message that they are not strong enough to protect their women. From this point of view, rape in war or conflict is a means of committing genocide, by destroying a particular group or nation's identity.

In a country where sexual violence is pervasive in everyday life, it is difficult to distinguish rapes motivated by xenophobic attitudes from those perpetrated because the general atmosphere of violence and lawlessness has allowed for it. Rape can be a political tool of xenophobia; or an act of opportunistic criminal violence against a woman because of her gender, under the guise of xenophobia.

Unfortunately, though reported numbers of rape were not alarmingly high in the recent attacks, it is likely that many xenophobia-related rapes are unreported because foreign women are fearful of the police. Firstly, as foreigners in an environment where the police have a reputation for complicity in corruption, intimidation and abuse of foreigners they are mistrustful of law enforcement. Secondly, as women in a society where the victims of sexual violence are often treated with scepticism and suffer secondary victimisation, there is a general reluctance to disclose.

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