The Rape of Africa: A History of Exploitation and Sexual Violence

Nov 10, 2025 0

The "Rape of Africa" refers to the invasion, conquest, and colonization of most of Africa by seven Western European powers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This period, driven by the Second Industrial Revolution, is also known as the era of "New Imperialism." In 1870, only 10% of the continent was formally under European control, but by the start of World War I almost all of Africa was colonized by European powers.

Map of Africa showing colonial possessions in 1914

Motives for Colonization

Several factors drove the Scramble for Africa:

Economic Interests: Sub-Saharan Africa was attractive to business entrepreneurs due to cheap materials, limited competition, and abundant raw materials such as ivory, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, diamonds, tea, and tin.
Strategic Value: The vast interior between Egypt and the gold and diamond-rich Southern Africa had strategic value in securing the flow of overseas trade. Britain, in particular, sought to secure the Suez Canal, completed in 1869.
Military and Naval Bases: The acquisition of military and naval bases was crucial for strategic purposes and the exercise of power. Growing navies required coaling stations and ports for maintenance.
Political Leverage: Colonies were seen as assets in balance of power negotiations, useful as items of exchange at times of international bargaining.
Military Power: Colonies with large native populations were a source of military power. Britain and France used soldiers from their colonies in many of their colonial wars.

Key Events and Figures

Several key events and figures shaped the Scramble for Africa:

Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza: Explored the region along the Congo River for France.
Henry Morton Stanley: Explored the Congo on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium.
Leopold II of Belgium: Organized the International African Association in 1876 and gained control of the Congo Free State.
Otto von Bismarck: As Minister-President of Prussia, he unified Germany and later gave in to popular pressure to establish German colonies in Africa.

The Berlin Conference

In 1884, Otto von Bismarck convened the Berlin Conference to discuss the African problem. The conference established rules for the division of the continent among European powers, emphasizing "effective occupation." This principle transformed Africa's colonization from informal economic penetration to systematic political control.

The Berlin Conference

Colonial Powers and Their Territories

Several European powers carved up Africa, each establishing control over various regions:

Great Britain: Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and the Cape Colony (South Africa).
France: Tunisia, Guinea, and territories in West Africa.
Germany: Togoland, Cameroons, Southwest Africa, and Tanganyika.
Italy: Eritrea, Italian Somaliland, Tripolitania, and Cyrenaica (Libya).
Belgium: Congo Free State (later the Belgian Congo).
Portugal: Angola and Mozambique.

The Congo Free State: A Case of Extreme Brutality

The Congo Free State, under the personal rule of King Leopold II of Belgium, became notorious for its extreme brutality and exploitation. Up to 8 million of the estimated 16 million native inhabitants died between 1885 and 1908 due to indiscriminate war, starvation, reduction of births, and diseases.

Roger Casement, an Irish diplomat, documented the depopulation, citing indiscriminate war, starvation, reduction of births, and diseases as the main causes. Sleeping sickness and smallpox also contributed significantly to the population decline.

Sexual Violence and the "Black Peril"

South African Women Stand Up To Sexual Violence

Elizabeth Thornberry's research sheds light on South Africa's contemporary epidemic of sexual violence by reconstructing the history of rape in the Eastern Cape from the precolonial era to the triumph of legal and sexual segregation. Political claims implied theories of sexual consent and enabled distinctive claims to control female sexuality, from customary authority to missionary Christianity and humanitarian liberalism to segregationism.

Read also: Amazing Facts About Africa

The "Black Peril" refers to the fear among colonial settlers that black men were attracted to white women and were having sexual relations with them. This fear, rooted in class and race prejudices, was particularly acute in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

In Southern Rhodesia, the "black peril" scare of the early 1900s came in the wake of the 1896 war of resistance, leading to campaigns to control the fundamental urges of African men. The Immorality Suppression Ordinance in September 1903 imposed severe penalties for interracial sex, including the death penalty for "attempted rape."

In South Africa, the history of violence and dispossession has bred a toxic masculinity. Under colonialism and apartheid, adult Africans were designated as "boys and girls," legally and economically infantilized. Asserting masculinity could provide a way of rejecting that position.

According to Gqola the “female fear factory” keeps women silent and biddable. Crimes like the rape and murder of Anene Booysen, 17, communicate a particular message to women: don’t go out at night, or that could happen to you.

At the heart of Gqola’s book is the 2006 rape trial of Jacob Zuma: “a watershed moment” for South Africa’s gender problems. The president was accused of rape charge by a woman known as Khwezi, a “well-known HIV-positive activist, lesbian daughter of Zuma’s late comrade”, who was forced to leave the country in the wake of the trial. Zuma, who was deputy president at the time, was acquitted by the courts.

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Impact on South Africa

Most South Africans learn about rape, or the threat of rape, when they are very young - even if they are yet to have the words for it. Sexual abuse has become normalised. Though the country’s annual crime figures, released on Tuesday, saw the number of sexual offences drop by just over 5% to 53 617 between 2014-2015, most researchers believe this figure reflects only a fraction of actual that occur. The chances of rape convictions have proved to be scanter still.

Understanding history. The notion that rape in South Africa is a specifically post-apartheid problem is dismantled by Gqola, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. It is natural that rape statistics would rise after 1994, she writes, because black women felt more comfortable to come forward. Police stations under apartheid had previously been deeply unfriendly places.

If we’re serious about tackling rape we must interrogate its histories properly, Gqola adds, taking into account the rape and forced impregnation of slave women in Cape society and that rape was a core feature of British colonial rule. Under apartheid, no white men were hanged for rape and the only black men who were hanged for rape were convicted of raping white women.