Men join campaign to end violence against women
When an older man raised his hand to speak on the third day of a gender workshop in Hoedspruit, a rural community in northern South Africa, Bafana Khumalo’s heart sank. As the facilitator of the workshop, which specifically targeted men, he had already touched on what makes men real men and how the unequal power between men and women was helping to fuel the sky-rocketing increase in HIV and AIDS in South Africa.
Mr. Khumalo worried that the participant would give a lecture about how thinking that men and women are equal goes against African culture or how giving women power is dividing families. Older men are deeply respected in rural communities and he knew this man could spoil the workshop.
“Yesterday, after I got home”, the man began, “I called my sons. I called my wife. And I explained what we are doing in this workshop”. He told his children that things had to change in their home. No longer could their mother come back tired from a day of work and be expected to cook, clean, wash the dishes and clear up all on her own. It was simply unfair.
From now on, he told his children, they would have to do some of the household work. “You have to start cleaning and tidying the house. You have to begin preparing dinner so when your mother comes home she can see that we have all contributed. I can’t learn to cook. I am too old. But I will wash the dishes.” For Mr. Khumalo, it was a big moment.
This participant had accepted a key idea of the workshop: that we are not born knowing what it means to be a man. We learn what manliness is from the people around us who have decided what it means. And because it is something society has decided on, it can also be changed by society. In the past, we have said that manhood is about “dominance and aggression, sexual conquest and fearlessness,” says Mr. Khumalo. These social ideas also say how men and women should behave. If we want to improve out lives today, we have to examine all the different ways in which men and women are unequal.
Making progress
“I look back at this moment,” he told Africa Renewal, “and I realise we are getting somewhere. This story is repeated again and again whenever we do our programme.” Across South Africa, such workshops are beginning to change attitudes. Research by the South African Men as Partners network shows that 71 per cent of men taking part in such workshops believe that women should have the same rights as men, compared with only 25 per cent more generally. Asked whether they thought it was normal to sometimes beat their wives, 82 per cent of workshop participants said it was not, while 38 per cent of non-participants thought wife-beating was normal.
Mr. Khumalo is co-director of Sonke Gender Justice, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) formed in 2006 to try to deal with violence against women and HIV/AIDS. He was struck, he says, by how ‘hungry’ the men in his workshops are to discuss violence against women and their role in that violence. “They express a heartfelt need to be different men and different fathers from the older generation of men”. He strongly believes that gender equality can not be achieved only through women’s empowerment alone and that men’s behaviour and attitudes are driving both the HIV epidemic and violence against women.
Numerous studies find that South Africa has the highest incidence of reported rape of any country in the world. In 2006, the South African Medical Research Council surveyed 1,370 male volunteers from 70 villages and found that close to one man in four had participated in sexual violence. More than 16 per cent had raped a woman who was not his partner or had participated in gang rape, and 8.4 per cent had been sexually violent towards an intimate partner.
When apartheid ended in 1994, achieving equality between women and men was a major goal of the new government. The protection and promotion of women’s rights and gender equality was enshrined in the 1996 constitution, and a Commission on Gender Equality was established. Six years later, Shelia Meintjes, one of the commission members, said, “We are realising that if we don’t bring men in as partners, we won’t win the battle”. That view guides activists’ current work with men.
Building national men against violence campaigns
The first of this work with men was done by women in women’s organizations. Agisanang Domestic Abuse Prevention and Training (ADAPT), for instance, developed a programme to educate men about domestic violence using skits performed in township taverns and in men’s marches, one of which was attended by then President Nelson Mandela. Eventually, men’s began to form groups specifically to address men’s roles, their responsibilities, attitudes and behaviour. This ‘men’s movement’ has gradually spread.
Now groups like Fathers Speak Out, the Men as Partners network and the South African Men’s Forum are involved. Trade union federations, government departments and faith-based groups also have programmes on gender equality and HIV. They hold workshops, stage dramas, promote discussions in taverns, paint murals highlighting the issues and undertake other activities that involve the community.
Sonke Gender Justice is now trying to build a national campaign involving both men and women. Sonke’s One Man Can campaign is one example of this broader approach. It is being carried out in nine provinces in South Africa and is gradually being taken up in neighbouring countries. The campaign’s messages include suggestions about how to build trust between partners and with women in general and also that men can love passionately, respectfully and sensitively.
“We want men to be able to speak out and take a stand, not to have to watch from the sidelines and do nothing,” explains Mr. Khumalo. If a man sees a woman who being beaten or hears screams from the other side of a closed door, he needs to act responsibly. “Women are afraid of us. They are afraid to hear footsteps behind them in the night. We have to show them that we care and that we will no longer accept men’s bad behaviour towards them.”