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As we celebrate Women’s Month, we need to recommit ourselves to living up to our ideals of human rights and respect for human dignity.
Studies show domestic violence and gender-based violence are extremely high in our society across race, class and cultural divides.
The rate of homicides targeting women in 2009 was five times the global rate. The toxic masculinity of our deeply patriarchal society lies at the heart of most of these ills.
Men continue to shape their identities on the belief that they are entitled to possess and dominate women and children. Women accept the inferior status they are assigned – even in political parties, trade unions and the private sector – with little sustained protest.
The gendered layers of power hierarchies within this patriarchal society are coloured in ways that condemn poor black men to the bottom rung. Wounded, humiliated men who continue to be taunted by more powerful alpha males tend to take out their frustrations on the women and children closest to them – at home, at work and in the community.
Addressing gender-based violence and other crimes in our society requires systematic transformation to end sexism, patriarchy, and the poverty, unemployment and inequality in our midst. At the heart of the crisis we face is the clash of values between those of the constitutional democratic culture we signed up to and the values that govern the ANC.
The ANC as a liberation movement survived the years of struggle and persecution by putting loyalty and trust in its leaders as a non-negotiable institutional cultural trait. This tradition was vital for survival in a hostile environment.
But the ANC is now a governing party in a constitutional democracy in which citizens are the owners of the common wealth, and entitled to be served by public representatives and officials accountable to them.
The ANC government, however, continues to operate as a liberation movement, instead of a governing party in a democracy accountable to all citizens.
To add insult to injury, the party has succeeded in weaving a captivating narrative that claims sole authorship of the liberation of our country and projects its leaders as the only heroes of the struggle, with grudging acknowledgment of a few others.
Adding power to this narrative is the fear and insecurity in the minds of ordinary citizens that, without the ANC in government, apartheid will return. Gone would be the freedom, social grants, food parcels and RDP houses, as if social welfare benefits are gifts from the ANC to citizens. But they are funded by citizens through the taxes they pay and do not come from the ANC. The ANC has constructed a false “white danger”, suggesting only it can protect us from a return to apartheid.
We dare not repeat the mistakes of our white fellow citizens who became captive to the narrative of the National Party as the protector against the “swart gevaar” and communist rule.
The politics of fear is the protective shield of unaccountable politicians and public servants.
What is to be done? Women stand to benefit the most from healing our wounded and dysfunctional society. There are enough women, men and young people who are committed to, and already working towards, tackling the core problem of male dominance and violence in our society. What is needed is solidarity and stronger networks of support.
Relegating the important transformation of gender relationships between men and women to a single ministry of women, children and people with disabilities is an insult.
There is growing evidence that this ministry has neither the budget nor intellectual resources to develop the programmes needed to discharge even its limited mandate.
Citizens cannot afford to continue to be silent in the face of the outrages against women and children in our society. We need to demand action, not words, from our government.
We need the voice of spiritual leaders to call for accountability for the brutal, gender-based violence. Mothers’ unions, religious federations of women, stokvels, professional women’s organisations and other social justice groups need to galvanise support for an end to this violence.
Imagine if our faith-based and spiritual leaders were to mobilise their members and other responsible citizens to demand a return to ubuntu at home, at work and in public life. This is what accountability should be about this Women’s Month.
