The South African government has been condemned for its "complete silence" over the high level of rape reported by Zimbabwean women applying for asylum, at the hands of the security forces in their country.

At least 15 percent of the Zimbabwean women refugees who visited a counselling centre run by the Zimbabwe Torture Victims/Survivors Project (ZTVP) in Johannesburg over the past 20 months alleged they had been raped.

"The most frequent perpetrators reported were supporters of the ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) ... state agents - police, army and Central Intelligence Organisation [CIO] - were reported too, with the police being the most frequent state agency reported," said the study by the ZTVP.

The ZTVP is a partner project of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, an NGO that helps communities deal with violence. The project offers medical assistance, counselling and limited social assistance to Zimbabwean survivors of torture now living in South Africa.

Ahmed Motala, executive director of the centre and a human rights lawyer, lashed out at the South African government for its alleged tacit approval of attempts to block moves to censure Zimbabwe at the United Nations, the African Union and in the Southern African Development Community. "We urge the South African government, now that it is also a member of the UN Security Council, to become more vocal against Zimbabwe."

The ZTVP report, 'Women on the Run: Female Survivors of Torture Amongst Zimbabwean Asylum Seekers and Refugees in South Africa', was released on Thursday to coincide with the global campaign, '16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence', which ends on International Human Rights Day on 10 December. The report based its findings on interviews conducted with 102 women assisted at the centre between February 2005 and September 2006.

Zimbabwe, once a middle-income country, has become the world's fastest shrinking economy outside a war zone. An inflation rate of around 1,200 percent has pushed the price of even a basic shopping basket beyond the reach of many Zimbabweans, who have sought refuge in neighbouring South Africa. An estimated three million Zimbabweans are now live abroad: one-quarter of Zimbabwe's domestic population.

About 32 percent of all alleged torture survivors who were sought out by the ZTVP during the 20-month period were women. At least 67 percent of the women at the centre said they had been politically active in some way when they lived in Zimbabwe, and 43 percent described themselves as members of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Last month, a Human Rights Watch report alleged that the systematic abuse of rights activists, including excessive use of force by police during protests, arbitrary arrests and detention, had intensified in Zimbabwe in the past year.

The ZTVP report contained harrowing accounts of sexual violence. The most recent case was a woman, identified as 'X' to protect her identity, who claimed she had been raped by the police after she attended an MDC meeting in April this year, in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. She was allegedly held in a police station for three days without food and on her release was forced into a van and taken to a isolated area and raped by a policeman.

"She [X] tried to resist. She was trampled upon, and burnt with a cigarette on her thighs and buttocks. The perpetrator ejaculated inside her vagina and smeared his semen all over her body. He also urinated on her. He did this so that she could not forget the experience. She was taken back to Harare police station and instructed to bathe herself. She was also threatened with death should she inform anyone," said the report.

In a snap survey by ZTVP in 2005, 30 percent of the women complained that they had suffered political violence, and 44 percent reported having been denied access to food because they were opposition supporters.

Only 36 percent of the women interviewed for the report had been given asylum seeker status, and a mere two percent had been given refugee seeker status (an asylum seeker is a person who has applied for refugee status). The report commented that these figures should cause the "South African authorities serious embarrassment".

Jacob van Garderen, national coordinator of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Project at Lawyers for Human Rights, a South African NGO, said South Africa was struggling to clear a backlog of 7,000 applications by Zimbabwean asylum seekers. "This is besides the 11,000 fresh application filed since the beginning of this year [2006] until June."

He described the process of granting asylum or refugee status as "difficult" and long. "It can take a year to get an appointment with the department of home affairs to fill in the form to apply for asylum or refugee status." During that period, many asylum seekers end up being deported back to the country where they feared prosecution, which was against the South African constitution, van Garderen said.

Vincent Hlongwane, a South African government spokesman defended Pretoria's failure to tackle Zimbabwe over its rights record. He said South Africa did not "believe in talking down" to Zimbabwe, which was a "sovereign state". "It is for the people of Zimbabwe to resolve their problems themselves," he said. "We can only assist them. Besides, the former Tanzanian president [Benjamin] Mkapa has been mandated by the AU to help Zimbabwe, and we have full confidence in his abilities."