implications; hence most people chose the safer route; to plead ignorance. It could also be a reflection of how society has normalized some practices, and has ceased to see the harm they visit upon society. A significantly higher number of persons in the middle class than the working class indicated that they did not know of any harmful practices that increase susceptibility to rape. More people in the working class than in the middle class indicated that they knew of harmful practices that led to rape. However, in most cases, the examples of the practices given were poverty related, again speaking to the function of privilege and indicating that rape is more likely to occur amongst the poor than it is among the affluent or more privileged members of society. 4.3.1 Traditional practices Regional44 and international45 human rights instruments encourage states to eliminate harmful cultural practices. Such practices are generally associated with the exercise of long-standing traditional and religious norms and values which cause harm to the physical and/or psychological well-being of all or some of the members of the society in which these values are recognised and practiced, in most caseswomen. The traditional harmful practices which the respondents gave included: 44  Kuripa ngozi/ukuhlawula ingozi (spirit appeasement) where a virgin is given to the family of the deceased to appease his spirit for whatever wrong was done by a member of the other family. She is then forcefully married into the family of the deceased.  Barika/isithembo (polygamy) in which a man is allowed to have many wives and demand sex from each of them as and when he wants was also seen as making women susceptible to rape.  Chiramu/umlamu- the practise of make-believe love between brothers-in-law and their young sisters-in-law was also identified as increasing the risk of these girls getting sexually abused. In most cases, it begins with the fondling of the breasts until the brother-in-law manages to have sex with the young girls. They are told not to report as this is all part of being “nice” to the brother in law and most young girls in their innocence will not report.  Madenhe/chikapa/ukhuthethela amongst most Shona tribes and chinamwari among people of Malawian descent, in other words sex initiation where elderly women teach young girls how to perform sexually in order to satisfy their husbands in bed was also seen as exposing girls to sexual abuse.  kubatidza moto/ukuyakha umuzi in which the younger brother of an infertile husband is given permission by a group of elders, behind the infertile man’s back and without the woman’s consent, to have sex with his sister in-law in order to make her pregnant and in other cultures allowing the father in law to sleep with his daughter in law in order for the marriage to be considered fully consummated also subjects women to rape. See Article 4 (2)(d) of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (The Maputo Protocol)-which describes harmful cultural practices as practices that legitimise and exacerbate the persistence and tolerance of violence against women. 45 See Article 5 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women which requires all states to eradicate prejudices and practices based on the inferiority or superiority of either sex.