The interim director of the South African Medical Research Council’s (SAMRC) Gender Health Research Unit, Naeemah Abrahams, believes that despite cases of gender-based violence making headlines every single year, the situation is improving.
Responding to the murder of Tshegofatso Pule, which sparked widespread social media outrage, Abrahams said changing men’s behaviour would be the only way to achieve lasting change with regards to gender-based violence in the country.
She said the National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide had been adopted, which was the first concrete step by the government in years.
News24 spoke to Abrahams about what has changed in South Africa’s battle against femicide, what the plan entails, what factors increase the risk of femicide, and what forced government to take action.
Every single year we get this flood of public outrage over gender-based violence and nothing seems to change. Has anything really improved the past few years?
Whenever there’s a surge in violence, or there is a public figure who is killed, or when people are just gatvol, we get this upsurge. Over the last two years, the change has been that government was forced to listen. And the national strategic plan has been developed, and it was launched and approved by government just a few months ago. So, for the first time, we have political will – and we didn’t have that before.
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Political leadership is one of the key things that’s needed to bring about change. Because, without that, we’re not going to see resources flow. And we are not going to do that without a civil society that can hold government to account.
What were some of the difficulties in developing the policy?
It took us two years to develop it. So, it just shows you how many people needed to be involved. And how many issues had to be dealt with. And one of our main problems has been that we had of a slight difficulty knowing which government department was leading this issue. Is it the department of women, is it the department of social development, is it health [or] is it justice? It was just all over and it’s still a little bit all over. And that might be one of the problems that we have to deal with in the future.
Very much like the HIV plan [of] 15 years ago or so, [it] was also the struggle of finding what is it that we must do? Who is going to do it? And, what is really important for us is that this plan is based on evidence. It’s based on science. So it’s got a big area around prevention, and the prevention that’s being presented in the there is based on the little bit we know about what works. There’s an area around justice and there’s an area around response.
So this is not necessarily crime prevention. This is now… once a person has been abused, what kind of support and care does a person require?
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What causes gender-based violence and femicide in SA?
It’s doesn’t have a quick fix, because it’s such a deep-seated problem. It is so part of norms, it is something you grow up in. And it’s something you and I have… all our own norms that come from our family or being parented, or in our society or in school. So many things impact on it. Changing those norms, which is largely about male behaviour change… it can be done, it can be done. But it’s not going to happen overnight.
You see the preventing of femicide is all about proving violence against women. So there’s not a huge big difference in what we’re going to do if we want to prevent femicide. All these women who have been killed in the last month, have been killed because they were in positions of vulnerability in terms of men’s behaviour. It’s about social norms. It’s about using violence and getting away with the use of violence. Women being powerless, not having economic security, not being able to get out of situations.
What are the factors that increase the risk of femicide and abuse in South Africa?
We have a pretty good idea what the factors are that are the primary factors that increase the risk of a women abuse, and increase the risk for men to be an abuser. A woman who is in a relationship with a controlling partner, she’s at risk. Poverty plays to some extent a role, but not always. We know bad mental health plays a role. We know what happens in the childhood impacts on men becoming abusers and impacts on women’s self-esteem and believing that she’s not worthy, for example, of having a relationship, where she is not treated badly. People role-model what they see.
Acceptance of violence and using violence in other kinds of settings, we found is a risk factor. But the primary consistent aspect across the globe is about cultural and social norms on how women are viewed and how women are objectified and how women are controlled.
What is the difference between gender-based violence and femicide?
Gender-based violence does not always lead to a killing. In intimate relationships, women are the housewives, they are subordinate, and should they step out of those roles… are considered to not be forming those roles, men would correct them by emotionally, physically, economically abusing them. You get men who abused woman that are not necessarily the partner, so they are strangers. They look for opportunities when a woman is on a train or she’s walking, and they see an opportunity to rape her and then killing her afterwards. That’s also gendered because pape has happened… and the woman is abused and killed because she’s a woman. Right. And so that’s the gendered nature of violence against women. So, femicide is when a woman dies as a result of violence… So it’s the most extreme form.
And why do you think it took so long for a strategy to be developed by the South African government?
You know, it had to come from leaders. It had to come from government leaders, and government leaders did very ad hoc kind of things. They would say: “Oh, we are supporting a school, we are supporting shelters.” They didn’t give it attention, I think, because it wasn’t considered important until there was such a big backlash.
Mass protests, such as the ones at Parliament last year, absolutely contributed to government taking… Without it, it wouldn’t have happened. Government didn’t do this on their own. They did it because they had pressure.
– This interview has, in places, been shortened.
