Confronting three pandemics

In Sub-Saharan Africa we are confronted by three pandemics, poverty, HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence. Just over a year ago, we met as colleagues and discussed what is it that we can do to make a difference and re-shape the sketch of gender-based violence in our society.

We conducted a survey with over a thousand men around Johannesburg in the Gauteng province of South Africa, asking them three basic questions. First, What is men’s response to gender-based violence? Second, what is the government response and how do they feel about that response? And third, how would they intervene in reducing the scourge?

The responses were varied, but very interesting in many respects. On the first question, most men reacted with anger. They acknowledged that gender-based violence is indeed a major problem in our society, that they did not support it, and that it is something that needs to be uprooted from the roots so that all of the people in our society can have lives free of gender-based violence.

But what was very interesting for us was the response to the second question. Most of the men polled for this survey responded that government was doing too much! Of course, because in South Africa we have a legislative framework that seeks to respond to these gender challenges with our Domestic Violence Act, the new Sexual Offenses Act, the Maintenance Act and the myriad of other laws that are progressive, it does seem like Government is doing a lot-- at least at face value. So men do feel that government is doing too much because they often hear or read in the newspapers about men that face prosecution for these acts.

But the third response raised even more fundamental questions around involving men in the whole notion of gender equality. The men responded, ‘yes, we are keen to intervene, but often do not know what to do.’ ‘We are at loss. If I know that my friend is abusing his partner or spouse, what is it that I can do? More often than not if I do get involved, I become part of the problem because I then get accused that I have a relationship with his partner and that is why I am intervening."

This gave rise to what we developed as the One Man Can Campaign, which is a campaign that seeks to involve men because, indeed, from this survey it was clear that men do want to change. Men do want to engage in positive interventions that will reduce the scourge of violence in our society, but they lack skills of how to do it.

If you have grown up in an environment where virtually everything in society has told you it is correct to do certain things in a particular way, it is not easy to take a different view. The social script in our society communicates a message that asserts that violence is normal. Conflict is resolved through violence. This is part of the legacy of apartheid.

And so we developed this intervention as a way of mobilizing men so that, indeed, young men and boys and older men can play a positive role in reducing the scourge of Gender based violence in our society. This approach seeks to offer various options that men can take to play a meaningful and useful role in society that affirms the value of gender equality.

We targeted influential role players in society. In this process we work with traditional leaders because in many instances, when you talk to men about why they behave in these destructive ways towards women, and other men, part of the excuse people give is about culture. They argue that it is my culture that compels me to do this. And I always argue back that I am not an anthropologist, but the little bit of research that I have done on most cultures in our continent that I am aware of, asserts an opposite view. Most African cultures place a major responsibility on men to be providers and protectors of their families and loved ones. In fact a man who abuses his partner or any member of his family is frowned upon by society. In many instances there would even be communal censure for a man who behaves different to this expectation.

There can be no justification whatsoever for the kind of treatment that women get in our society on the basis of culture. On the contrary, what I have found is that cultures actually place a lot of burden on men to protect and provide for their families. That raises its own problems, but the point I am making is how culture is often misused in order to justify something that should not be justified even within this logic.

We work with religious leaders in our society because, once more, religion also plays a very influential role in ensuring that the status quo obtains. In most of our religious formations, very little positive intervention is given to the situation of gender-based violence. It is either condoned subtly or given a mystical definition like it is the devil that is making men behave this way, let us pray about it and hope it will go away. We all know though that this sort of intervention is not helpful. Violence continues in some instances to the point of death.

South Africa is regarded as a religious country. The majority of our citizens profess to follow some form of religious formation with the main one being Christian. The majority of leaders in these institutions are men. Possibly, they themselves do these things in their own homes and they will find nothing wrong with this kind of behaviour. Thus the response may be lukewarm.

We work with boys on gender awareness and health wellness because we also think this is very important. Most men thrive on what I call dangerous masculinities, masculinities that expose us men to all sorts of vulnerabilities. Having more girlfriends is seen as being very hip and chic and therefore, in order to prove your manhood, men are tempted to have as many sexual encounters as they can, with all the attended vulnerabilities that are related to this kind of behaviour.

But yet, as I said, men indeed do want to change and I want to give two quick examples. We work with an organization; I am glad my colleagues are here from Hoedspruit in South Africa. When we started work there just over a year ago, it was a very difficult terrain for us to go and work in, a farming community. We work with farm labourers who come from rural settings of our country; they are very conservative. Many from these areas would argue that culture is rigid and certain things have to be done in particular ways.

And we decided to start our work in that area with the farm Supervisors who are very influential in the farming area; they have the right to say who gets a job and the power to allocate accommodation in the compounds. And so there were lots of issues related to transactional sex, sexual abuse, abuse of alcohol and the related abuses that go with this kind of behaviour.

In doing this work with a group of Supervisors, we had as one participant an old man over 60, Every morning when we start our sessions, we start with a reflection of what we did the previous day. And as we learned from Paulo Freire, when you work with adults it is always important to get them involved in their own learning process so that they take responsibility for their learning and transformation.

And so on a Wednesday morning—we had started on a Monday-this old man raised his hand and said, “Now, I want to share something with you.” And I said to myself, Uh-oh, now we are going to have trouble. Because I expected, he was one of the most conservative in the group. He is probably going to tell us to pack up and leave. But he said the following: “I went home yesterday, Tuesday evening. I called all my children and my wife and I laid down the law. I told them from today, we are not going to wait for their mother to come back from work, because she knocks off later than all of us, to prepare dinner for us, to clean the house and do the washing.” He said, “I told my sons [he only has sons] that from today, things are going to change in this house. All of us are going to pitch in. We are all going to help with whatever we can.”

But he said, “Do not expect me to cook. I am too old to learn, but I will wash the dishes.” And that was a very significant transformation for me, that this man has come to this level and has not only ingested these ideas, but has begun to enact them in his own life. This approach by the old man raises its own challenges with regards to democracy, but I suppose we have to take it one step at a time!

The second example is one of a Traditional Leader in Kwazulu-Natal--a very progressive traditional leader. The issue related to the land of his community, which was taken away by the Apartheid government. To make the story short, he got married to one lady who was development-oriented person and who worked very hard to help the community reclaim their land after the advent of democracy in 1994.

They reclaimed the land and were successful. She started projects in the community and the community was involved food gardening and all sorts of very creative things utilizing their land and putting it to good and profitable use. When things were much more stable, the community approached the chief and said, “Well this wife you married, you married yourself. She is not the one we chose for you as the community. So, we are going to choose one for you as it is custom, so that you marry the one who will give birth to the next king for this tribe.”

And to his credit he refused. He said, “I cannot do that. How can I turn back on a woman who has been with me even when I was going through very difficult and trying times? How do I then now play this big chief who gets so many wives simply because the community says that is the way culture dictates that it has to be done.” And they engaged in serious confrontations, almost threatening to dethrone him. He approached the Gender Commission (a statutory body in South Africa) to lay a complaint. Now, this was a very interesting development since it is widely known in South Africa that the Kwazulu-Natal region is one of the most conservative areas, especially on cultural and traditional matters. To have a chief take that stand against his community, and to not stop there but to approach a constitutional institution to lay a claim against his own community—this is a positive sign that indeed men can change.

We have a lot of work to do. We must build on the positive notions that we see from men who seek to change and who are prepared to be agents for gender equality. We must build on the prospects of positive partnerships between men and women for equality.

* Bafana Khumalo gave this presentation at the International Aids Conference, Mexico City, August 2008, on behalf of Sonke Gender Justice Network
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