By Dane Isaacs, Benita Moolman and Catherine Ndinda
The recent allegations against a Cape Town musician brought to light the distorted notions of perpetrators and perpetration that continue to dominate South African’s conversations about acts and patterns of gender-based violence against women and children.
The commonplace assumptions are that abusers are easily identifiable, that they are the strangers that teachers and parents warned you against, and that they are always and only violent.
All these perceptions have been challenged by the case of the Cape Town musician, and others, who when brought to face justice have left communities dumbfounded and asking: could the people that we entrust our children with also be potential abusers?
We (community members and family members, members of religious congregations) cannot comprehend that men we trust, respect and love can also be rapists and sexual molesters.
How could our children be suffering in silence and fear in the hands of people that we trust and do not even suspect?
The irony is that those who society adores and celebrates can also be a danger to the same society that bestowed them the celebrity status.
To overcome the scourge of GBV and to improve our response, we need to realise that perpetrators do not possess a specific “personality type”, nor do they come from a specific social class.
The perpetration of GBV cuts across race, class, and ethnicity. South Africa is a deeply patriarchal society.
The unequal system of patriarchy governs various aspects of South African society. GBV is commonly an act of patriarchy. It is perpetrated by men who wish to exercise power and control over their victims. These perpetrators can be anyone, from family members, “intimate partners, acquaintances, strangers or institutions” (Pypers, 2020).
Parents and caregivers need to always operate from the premise that anyone around your children can be an abuser. Victims of abuse are often the last to be heard as the knee jerk reaction of society is to first judge them for being victims instead of listening to the content of their claims and following the leads.
Households, institutions and the rest of society need to be so alert that when potential victims show any signs of abuse, these can be followed up and the victim can be supported.
Technology, such as surveillance cameras, has made it possible to address much of the unreported violence and abuse and it needs to be used by households and local governments to monitor spaces within their jurisdiction.
In communities where technology is not as commonly used, the people need to be the eyes and ears of our children and women in speaking up against GBV.
* Isaacs is a PhD intern at the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) and a doctoral candidate in the department of psychology at Stellenbosch University. Moolman is the programme manager of the Global Citizenship Programme at UCT and Ndinda is a human settlements and gender specialist at the HSRC.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of IOL.