Dr Mamphela Ramphele
Cape Town -- The shocking attack on eight women engaged in shooting a music video at an unused mine in Krugersdorp on Saturday was allegedly perpetrated by people who are in the country illegally and are involved in illegal mining.
To be clear, the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of gender-based violence in South Africa are not immigrants; they are South African men.
However, the ingredients in this heinous crime, taken together, reflect a brokenness of both our humanity and the functionality of our society for which women, already the face of poverty in the nation, often bear the brunt.
Each time there is a particularly horrendous incident of gender-based violence that makes the news, there is an outpouring of shock, horror and commitment to tackle the scourge. But it continues unabated.
Speaking after Saturday’s event, President Cyril Ramaphosa said: "We have directed the minister of police and law enforcement agencies to immediately embark on this to make sure that the perpetrators of this crime are apprehended and dealt with. Comrade Bheki Cele has already been there, and we are following up on this horrible incident.”
The Minister announced that three men had been arrested. Later, police said 65 suspects had been rounded up for contravening the Immigration Act and today police are reporting another 16 arrests.
But arresting the scourge of gender-based violence and rescuing the country from mismanagement and unsustainable lawlessness needs more than reactive policing. It needs interventions that are systematic and long term.
- First, it requires acknowledgement of the primacy of the societal task of healing the dehumanising conditions inherited from the past – left unaddressed in the democratic era. Colonial conquest and Apartheid undermined family life and the complementarity of men and women in society. African men in particular were humiliated and emasculated by the migrant labour system that separated them from their families, placed them in single sex hostels, and treated then like boys. Many poor men continue to live in humiliating conditions without the dignity of secure livelihoods. Multi-generational rage is driving the brutal gender-based violence in our society.
- And, second, it requires urgent interventions by the State and civil society organisations to begin the process of healing.
Conditions must be created in our communities and society to have conversations about how we deal with these multi-generational traumas and promote mutual healing. Healing that is essential to enabling each person to feel they have a stake, that they are recognised as co-members of the human family and begin to re-recognise the humanity in all other.
Conditions, that are conducive to a society focussed on investing in the creation of opportunities for participatory democratic processes in which ordinary good people, who are in the majority, have the courage and agency to stand up and take charge of their communities, inspired by the values of Ubuntu, of interconnectedness and interdependence. Lawlessness, criminality and impunity will have no place in an Ubuntu-driven society.
As Graça Machel, founding member and deputy chair of The Elders, commented in her address to the Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture on Archbishop Tutu’s 90th birthday last October, “violence is the breast milk we are feeding our young”.
“How can we break the vicious cycle of untold and unspeakable pain that visits women and children on a daily basis? While the days of the brutal apartheid regime are thankfully behind us, we are still a nation at war with ourselves. We are plagued by deeply entrenched and festering wounds and perhaps one of the most visible manifestations of these wounds is our violent, unequal society.”
As an organisation charged with representing the values of Archbishop Tutu, we call on the State, civil society, and the private sector to work together to tackle these festering wounds. The Faith Community must take the lead in addressing this scourge, which has even entered places of worship in our nation.
We can no longer avert our gaze from the abomination. Each of us must put up our hand to convene healing conversations and demand State support for those suffering the most under this brutality – women and children.
* Ramphele is the Chairperson of the Archbishop Tutu IP Trust
Cape Times