Insession writers spoke to different men in the City of Cape Town’s Cape Flats communities, where violent crime that includes abuse against women and children is always reported by the media. The Cape Flats townships that are always referred to as “violent crime hotspots” include Bonteheuwel, Elsies River, Khayelitsha, Manenberg, Heideveld, Hanover Park, Mitchells Plain, and Grassy Park.
Mr Oswald Lynch, a veteran community activist whose activism started in the pre-forced removals era on the Cape Flats, and who stayed in many communities on the Cape Flats, such as Vasco, Goodwood, Elsies River, Bishop Lavis and finally in Mitchells Plain, said from his perspective, gender-based-violence (GBV) is entrenched in the ordinary and working-class family homes.
“It can be said that the current violence is committed by our young men whose role models are their fathers, who abused and continue to abuse their wives. There are, however, other deep socio-economic factors that are the fundamental causes. The question is, how is the cable of socialisation that passes this problem (GBV) from one generation to the next, stopped?”
He said the debate should be focusing on breaking that cycle once and for all. He said the legacy of apartheid must be undone. “Overcrowding, especially in the historically disadvantaged communities, must stop.”
According to Mr Lynch, education, economic emancipation, the provision of decent houses to the needy people, the promotion of morals in our communities, are among the solutions to stop GBV.
Rev Prof Peter Storey said one of the factors among the reasons that are complex, that are behind GBV, is a serious problem of culture. “There are people who regard their culture as beyond justice and God. God is above everything.”
He said culture is changeable and not a static thing. “Men must stop hiding behind culture and use culture to justify their tendencies of abuse. All men must be called upon to begin to recognise the full autonomy and status of women.”
He said the problem of the justification of culture by men manifests itself even at police stations, places where women, who are the victims of GBV, are supposed to enjoy some temporary refuge. “But, regrettably, even at the police stations women are exposed to the perpetuation of violence. When the woman victim opens a charge against the perpetrator, she would be laughed at and ridiculed by the police at the police station.”
He said part of the strategies to curb GBV should be a massive education to remove these stereotypes from the minds of men. He also called upon women to continue their struggles against violence that targeted at them. “At some stage in history women changed their sexual behaviour towards men as part of their strategies.”
Mr Russel de Vree, who is a son of an African man and a coloured woman, and who also stayed in different communities in the Cape Flats, also holds a view that GBV is a manifestation or a symptom of a very deep and complex problem which requires a concerted effort to eradicate.
He attributed that deep problem entirely to the system of apartheid. “Unfortunately, the problem is not going to resolve itself, it calls for a mass action in order to remove it. It is with us in our communities and its victims are women in our communities, not women in historically advantaged communities. We must come together to defeat it.”
Mr Shakes Mashengqana of Khayelitsha’s Site B Section said the problem is the failure of the family and the church units in the community to mould a child. He said families have abandoned their responsibility of instilling the right values that include the values of Ubuntu in children. According to Mr Mashengqana, parents rely on schools for the inculcation of discipline in their children.
“As long as the family unit is folding its hands and just dumping the child at school for the inculcation of values in the mind of the child, the problem of GBV is going to remain alive and very dangerous in this advanced era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
He said as the family unit fails, peers fill the gap and teach the child all the wrong things. Mr Mashengqana called on all the role players, the family, the school, the church, and the entire community to come together.
By Mava Lukani
21 June 2020
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