Johannesburg - Veteran actor and gender-based violence (GBV) activist, Patrick Shai, has expressed concern with the manner in which gender-equality policies are implemented and the effects of some policies on black men.
Shai was among several panellists at the Black Men’s Imbizo held at Constitution Hill over the weekend.
South African black men had been systemically affected by apartheid and the litany of laws that followed the dawn of democracy, he said.
The gathering, aimed at dissecting social issues affecting black men of all ages, was held in partnership with The Star, Tshepo1 Million and Ubuma leadership.
The discussion included government policies, cultural rules that affect men, employability and the role apartheid in the theft of the identity of African men.
Shai highlighted several problems with how the government’s equality policies were contributing to the psychological issues that black men suffered from.
“When the woman in the family is accentuated to a position of privilege and they begin to feel that women empowerment policies are working for them; a lot of women are working behind the till and we call that empowerment, we don’t check how much they get and we do not check the conditions in which they work. This woman comes back to the house and she feels Jack is redundant, he is hopeless and he is helpless,” he said.
Shai said the brutality of some laws on African men placed so much pressure on them that in many instances it left them emotionally bruised. African men were affected by apartheid and the emotional trauma was being passed down from generation to generation.
“The system decided that we cannot have a powerful African male employed to take a responsible position and provide for his family; so let us break him down. So that even when his son looks his father in the eyes, he says, ‘my father is useless’. There will be families that transcend the trappings of society,” Shai said.
Shai further criticised law enforcement for not taking the issues of domestic violence seriously. The government had to do more to ensure that national policies remedy the current crisis of GBV, he said. There should be a greater emphasis of using policy and the national budget on rehabilitating men and helping them unlearn toxic habits than focusing on the number of arrests, he added.
“Until we charge the president and say we are charging you and say you are the custodian of safety for each and every one of us and for every woman who died in the period of your presidency you are going to be charged, he will make sure that his ministers work,” he said.
Shai said in some instances men were being laughed at when they themselves went to report cases of domestic violence.
“They tell you as a man that you must be a man and then when the man uses fists that’s when you see 20 police vans coming,” he said.
The Star editor Sifiso Mahlangu said editorial ways of reporting on GBV issues need to be critically looked at.
Mahlangu also raised concerns with the framing of the Constitution which, he said, did not necessarily reflect the cultures and values of African people.
“The people who pretend to be solutions on TV, they did not sanctify this nation; they took an apartheid system packaged the Union Buildings and packaged the constitutional and packaged Pretoria and they just ran this government without breaking down the systemic evil of apartheid and they continued to say let’s run this country the way the boers ran it. They did not bring the social morale of the black person,” Mahlangu said.
ANC veteran and former government director-general Frank Chikane said apartheid had far-reaching consequences.
The system separated men from their families; and he was a victim at some point of a disfigured family structure due to apartheid, he said.
“The first part of my life was with my mother and my brother and my younger brother while our father was working in Johannesburg because of the pass laws he began to take us one by one,” Chikane said.
The Star