{"id":93650,"date":"2017-05-26T06:47:42","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T04:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/gender-based-violence-in-south-africa-whats-missing-and-how-to-fix-it-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2017-05-26T06:47:42","modified_gmt":"2017-05-26T04:47:42","slug":"gender-based-violence-in-south-africa-whats-missing-and-how-to-fix-it-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/gender-based-violence-in-south-africa-whats-missing-and-how-to-fix-it-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender-based violence in South Africa: what’s missing and how to fix it | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gender-based violence in South Africa: what’s missing and how to fix it<\/a>: <\/p>\n

A South African student invites people to "walk in others' shoes" doing a protest about gender based violence.<\/span> EPA\/Kim Ludbrook\t<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Valencia Farmer was 14 years old when she was brutally gang raped and murdered. She was stabbed 53 times. That was in 1999 and her killer was only sentenced for the crime 17 years later.<\/p>\n

Sihle Sikoji was 19 years old and some men didn\u2019t like the fact that she was a lesbian. So they stabbed her to death with a spear.<\/p>\n

Anene Booysen was gang raped and disemboweled in 2013. Less than a month later athlete Oscar Pistorius shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp through a closed toilet door. <\/p>\n

In May 2017, Karabo Mokoena became the latest face of South Africa\u2019s gender-based violence epidemic. She was killed and her body burned beyond recognition, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend.<\/p>\n

People remember these gruesome cases that end up on newspapers\u2019 front pages. These women\u2019s stories come with a flare up of societal outrage, protest and collective introspection. Then South Africans live in hope for a while, believing that this time something might change. But nothing does in a country marked by unusually high levels of rape and femicide.<\/p>\n

There is little fluctuation in these statistics, which are reported annually by the South African Police Services. What this means is that without political will, a change in the sensationalism and narratives around the reporting of gender based violence and men\u2019s greater involvement as allies with women when it comes to gender based violence, nothing will change.<\/p>\n

Bad reporting, bad use of words<\/h2>\n

One of the problems is how violence against women is reported. A 2011 study by Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre found that court proceedings got a lot of media coverage if they met a simple, grisly requirement: they should be brutal and shocking.<\/p>\n

Brutality may capture people\u2019s attention, but a lot of discussion around gender based violence in South Africa is devoid of contextual analysis. <\/p>\n

This comes with consequences. It normalises violence and narratives are produced in popular reporting that don\u2019t help society identify the right interventions for dealing with violence. People come to think that the solution to gender based violence lies in greater incarceration and retributive justice, rather than interventions with society at large that produces violent men. In the absence of interventions women vent their frustrations and pain in Twitter hashtags like #menaretrash. These stigmatise all men as contributing to gender based violence.<\/p>\n

As I perused the newspapers, online reporting and Sunday papers after Karabo Mokoena\u2019s death, I read the word \u201cscourge\u201d several times. This creates the impression that violence is visited upon us like the plagues in the Bible, without us knowing who is doing it or why. It makes the perpetrators of violence invisible. It also suggests that there\u2019s a cure, if we just wait long enough. This type of reporting encourages short term responses but not immediate committed action and interventions.<\/p>\n

When Anene Booysen\u2019s killer applied for bail, the then-minister of Women, Youth and People with disabilities Lulu Xingwana shouted \u201call rapists must rot in jail\u201d. During Oscar Pistorius\u2019 trial the governing party\u2019s Women\u2019s League echoed this sentiment.<\/p>\n

It is clear from these remarks that the governing African National Congress (ANC) sees higher incarceration rates as the solution to rape and femicide. Its members\u2019 oft-repeated cry of \u201crot in jail\u201d also suggests that rehabilitation is not viewed as a priority.<\/p>\n

The problem is that this response individualises the challenge of violence. It focuses on individual perpetrators without attempting to understand the very complex social conditions in South Africa that contribute to men\u2019s violent behaviour. These conditions include colonial and apartheid histories of violence, endemic poverty, substance abuse, deeply held patriarchal attitudes about women\u2019s place in society and the emasculation of unemployment when men measure their worth through work, or an absence of it.<\/p>\n

These issues all beg for solutions on a collective level. Without that sort of intervention, gender based violence will continue unabated.<\/p>\n

Lack of political will<\/h2>\n

There is also a visible absence of political will to fight these kinds of crimes. After Anene Booysen\u2019s murder, enraged South Africans called for a National Council on Gender Based Violence to be formed. President Jacob Zuma agreed to this and asked his then-Minister of Women, Youth and People with Disabilities to spearhead the initiative.<\/p>\n

But after the country\u2019s 2014 election the ministry was closed down. Now women\u2019s issues are represented by a single minister in the Presidency, and there\u2019s no sign of the council that was promised.<\/p>\n

Susan Shabangu, who is the minister for Women in the Presidency, has not demonstrated much will to genuinely tackle gender based violence. She recently described Karabo Mokoena as weak, saying this caused her death. Here we see the lack of political will to deal with sexual violence: the minister has not initiated any interventions or projects to deal with the country\u2019s outrageous proportions of gender based violence.<\/p>\n

What needs to change<\/h2>\n

South Africans are frustrated. Some express their feelings of hopelessness around violence on social media, tagging posts with #MenAreTrash. This is an example of women finding solidarity in their victimisation through telling their stories of sexual violence. These stories must be told and heard, because they show how vast the problem is and how women rarely speak out.<\/p>\n

But this particular campaign also stigmatises all men as deviant. Many men may react by becoming defensive. Potential allies are alienated. Gender based violence will only diminish if men and women unite to fight against it. Men have an important role to play in this struggle. <\/p>\n

Men will have to speak out to other men who are contributing to rape culture. They must start to address other men\u2019s perceptions and stereotypes about women\u2019s sexuality. They must call out men who believe women can be beaten to \u201cdiscipline\u201d them, or who refer to women as \u201csluts\u201d when they do not like their behaviour.<\/p>\n

Without intervention, the problem of sexual violence will not stop. Karabo Mokoena\u2019s name will be joined by hundreds more on a never-ending list of loss and brutality.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

Amanda Gouws receives funding from the NRF<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong> The Conversation \u2013 Articles (AFRICA)<\/a><\/small>
\n<\/p>\n

Read more on The Conversation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Gender-based violence in South Africa: what’s missing and how to fix it: A South African student invites people to "walk in others' shoes" doing a protest about gender based violence. EPA\/Kim Ludbrook Valencia Farmer was 14 years old when she was brutally gang raped and murdered. She was stabbed 53 times. That was in 1999 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[428,8890,25954,7149,3576,607,3991],"class_list":{"0":"post-93650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-africa-news-2","7":"tag-africa","8":"tag-conversation","9":"tag-genderbased","10":"tag-missing","11":"tag-south","12":"tag-violence","13":"tag-whats","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}