Tackling the root causes of GBV requires a national effort

It would seem that the period of 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children unleashes the worst in gender-based violence (GBV) cases in South Africa every festive season.

This time around, the most high-profile cases in the country emanated from KwaZulu-Natal. The recent incident that shocked the nation was of a teacher, Sbusiso Lawrence Ntaka, who posted a video on social media confessing to the murder of his 25-year-old girlfriend Nontobeko Cele. The culprit later hanged himself.

While the country was still reeling from the callousness of Cele’s murder and confession of her ex-boyfriend with her blood literally dripping from his face, another young man murdered his girlfriend, Bongeka Makhatini, 21, and their three-year-old toddler.

As in the first incident, the culprit took his own life too.

With each fresh incident of intimate-partner violence that ends up as a national headline, especially so soon after the 16 Days of Activism, it seems the country becomes gripped in the frenzy of wanting to know the details.

Then is shocked by the senselessness of it all, but still descends into the obligatory men versus women debate, especially on social media.

ALSO READ: Viral murder video: Nontobeko Cele’s friend says she was also attacked by Mtaka

These often-heated exchanges usually have no resolution except for their unmistakable effect of deepening the divide between the sexes and offering no tangible solutions to the scourge of GBV.

Chances are, this time next year, the country will be mourning more senseless murders of vulnerable women and children.

No amount of pointing of fingers or apportioning of blame to the one gender by the other will take the country any closer to a solution.

Neither will the constant shock expressed by the nation at this epidemic. As with any problem in life, the first step towards a solution must be the acceptance by the nation as a whole that GBV is a problem, and most importantly, for everyone.

Part of this acceptance must include the definition of the problem: the age at which it manifests, how it forms part of the rearing of children, how cultural practices contribute to it.

What the country sees as the headlines that intrude into their festive activities in December with gruesome stories of murder of women and children is the end-stage of an epidemic that starts off way before the murder.

ALSO READ: KZN man, girlfriend, and toddler found dead in double-murder suicide case

The murderers have been described as psychopaths in most of these cases, totally lacking in sympathy for their victims, but, more chillingly, they feel totally entitled to controlling the lives of their partners to the extent that they feel justified in taking those lives.

Part of the solution will be to get into the minds of those psychopaths and also into their lives and upbringing. GBV is not going to be solved through a screaming match on social media or on television.

This country’s media archives are full of documented stories of survivors of the scourge but very little on the work done to get to the bottom of the societal structures, cultural practices and norms that breed the psychopaths that feel entitled to take the life of their partner.

The country needs to find ways of talking about toxic masculinity, from the hidden recesses of academia or social media gender debates, to make it a tangible part of the normal upbringing of young males in society and finding practical ways of countering it on a day-to-day basis.

It is clear that the fear of legal consequences is not enough to deter offenders. So, the hunt for solutions needs to go far beyond the “all perpetrators will face the full might of the law”.

Cele and Makhatini’s killers did not hang around to go to jail.

NOW READ: Expert calls country ‘wounded society’ amid rising violence