This month it was Namhla Mtwa from Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. Another life of a woman coming to an end as a result of gender-based violence in our country. No arrests have been made yet. Public statements of condemnation from any sociopolitical organisation you can think of are coming out, and last week Wednesday there was a protest at the Mthatha police station as a result of this tragedy.
Activists and members of Mtwa’s family have been sharing videos, photos, and WhatsApp conversations showing how she was being physically and emotionally abused by Major Bhekizulu – her boyfriend – for a long time until before her ultimate murder. The boyfriend has obviously denied any involvement with the murder and the police minister has now promised yet another SA family that is a victim of a crime that he will investigate and prosecute soon.
The crisis in our society is far deeper and it requires institutional, systematic, structural, yet everyday programmatic work to decisively end the scourge of women abuse.
Three things are now clear about this predicament. First, our society is violent. Second, violence breeds dangerous masculinities – a damaged understanding of boyhood and manhood. Third, gender relations therefore between men and women, boys and girls, are structured in a paradigm of patriarchy which accelerates further manifestations of systematic violence even at the level of the state, the family household, and the economy.
This violence is not just a problem, but it is actually the foundation and cement that has built this country to be what it is today.
Violence has two siblings: patriarchy and racism. Patriarchy is a violent and an oppressive social structure that defines the roles, relations, behaviours, expectations and interactions between human beings at the disadvantage and subordination of women. Patriarchy instructs men to view women as objects who exist to serve and obey them. In a patriarchal society, women depend on men to survive – women are powerless, inferior, and their opinions do not matter.
If women dare to resist their domestic position in a patriarchal society, men discipline them through rape, assault, humiliation, emotional and financial abuse, and indeed by being murdered.
Patriarchy subconsciously informs society that men are entitled to the appearances, bodies, attention, time, and the decision-making of women. In other words, women must ask for the permission of men about what they should wear, think, do, and say.
The relationship between Bhekizulu and Mtwa was a manifestation of this patriarchal violence.
In addition, Bhekizulu also knew that he was dealing with a black woman – a body that carries a gender and a race that is easy to violate without consequences, because it is domesticated and nobody cares to defend it, even the state. When Mtwa began to find her voice, her urgency, and her independence – she got murdered.
In this kind of a society, the tears of a black woman are normal. They do not strike fear nor sympathy. Black women are supposed to cry, they must to be strong, they can be left alone to raise children by themselves, and they are expected to be loyal and forgiving no matter the amount of betrayal and humiliation they endure. If anyone assaults or rapes a black woman, nobody will believe them or make any follow up. Men know this very well. Men also know they will never dare do this to a white woman.
White women are protected. Their tears are real. They are precious. Everyone believes them. And if a man dares to touch a white woman, they are dead. Full stop.
Race, patriarchy, and violence therefore are deeply entrenched in the psyche of South Africans. SA has been built over centuries from this kind of violence. From settler colonialism, apartheid, and in the current capitalist democracy, the violent system of patriarchy has been consistent.
Between the history, the present, and the future of this country as far as patriarchal violence and racism is concerned, there is no Chinese wall.
In this regard, this structural crisis requires a deeper intervention that is systematic, institutional and active in everyday life – in our families, in our friendship circles, workplaces, classrooms, and in the policy apparatus of the state.
Boys must be raised differently to love, care, play, and cry. Men must unlearn abuse, control, violence, material possession, and peer competition.
Administratively, the state must function. Law enforcement agencies must work with society to enforce arrests and order. Society must work for peace, justice, and rehabilitation.
Our country and the world requires decolonisation. A serious project to end this kind of a violent society we live under today is needed. A society built and maintained from a paradigm of war will never find peace, stability, and wellness.
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