Jeff Radebe should know better

It is tempting to feel sorry for Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe. After all, he was engaging in adult talk with a 29-year-old woman.

She’s of voting age and should have known better.

Even worse, her tone in the texts exchanged between her and the minister suggests she wasn’t a victim but a willing participant in the whole drama.

One who even suggested that the minister must just “come through and have a look” at what he was requesting for in his texts. But this right here is the problem.

Some might say “she wanted it, she encouraged him, she should have known better that men in power do this all the time. She should have dressed better.”

SA is a country at war with its women.

We can advance a thousand reasons for why the situation is as it is but that will not help.

Men, all men, need to unlearn what they’ve been taught about being a man. Radebe might have done nothing wrong in the eyes of all the men who know what being a man is.

He saw a beautiful woman and did what many men in his position would have done: saw an opportunity to take advantage of a woman who would feel obliged to respond positively to his sexual advances, simply because of his position in government.

Feeling sorry for him because he’s been exposed is exactly what’s wrong with our definition of manhood.

We would rather disregard the fact that this woman is so many ranks and layers below the minister in her place of employment that she would instinctively feel obliged to respond positively towards his advances, because any negative response carried the possibility of her being in his bad books and having her continued employment threatened in government.

If you’re thinking, but “she encouraged this”, but it’s said she “dressed provocatively” around powerful politicians, or that “she should have known better”, you are part of the problem.

Why shouldn’t he have known better? We have been continuously subjected to so much wrongdoing by our political leaders that we’ve got to a point where we’re afraid to point out the wrongs for fear of appearing holier than thou.

But in a situation as toxic as ours towards women, it needs to be pointed out when a man in a position of power uses his position to take advantage of women.

Elected political leaders are put there for a reason: to become a beacon for society. In a country that has displayed so much hatred and violence towards women, we need to continuously call out those men at the helm of government who display tendencies that would encourage the status quo.

It would take a warped state of imagination to liken what Radebe is accused of having done to the terrible murders and violence against women that are reported on a daily basis.

But Radebe is a symptom of the disease that is part of our definition of manhood.

This disease makes some men see women as almost subhuman.

They’re objects to satisfy powerful men’s unlimited desires first and foremost and if they can’t guard against such men, they’re only letting themselves down.

Our patriarchal society has even taught us that almost all powerful men have women as a weakness.

To think that one half of humanity can even be described as a weakness for the other half is what is wrong with our society.

Radebe and all men need to do an honest introspection.

Sydney Majoko.

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