Educate men and boys on how to treat women

Parallel programmes would help victims and perpetrators, writes

Vicky Carras Tlhatlha

Our country is overwhelmed with incidents of human rights abuses against women and children. The worry is that in most incidents, if not all, the perpetrators are men.

The sickening revelation is that some victims know their abusers or have a relationship of some kind with them.

I had a talk informally with Rev Gift Moerane of the South African Council of Churches in Gauteng some time ago.

He indicated that our approach as a society around immoral behaviour, abuses, etc is to try and correct only what is happening to women instead of focusing on society as a whole.

We hear of programmes that focus on helping abused girl children, we have programmes that focus on women abuse.

Why are we ignoring boy children and men?

We ignore who the perpetrators are, ie men and boys.

As a society, we should not only look at women and children, we should also talk to men and boys to educate them to avoid future abuses and killings of women and children.

In the past couple of months, we have had incidents of men killing toddlers, men killing babies and children and burying them, men killing women because of insecurities, etc.

We should run parallel programmes in support of women and children (girls) and to educate men and boys on how they should be treating women and girl children.