New approach needed to end violence

Lately there have been a number of gender-based violence incidents happening within universities among students.

Incidents of rape have caused turmoil within university campuses, a place where it was never expected, considering the environment itself is filled with intellectuals.

Many campaigns such as the “Memeza” yellow whistle campaign were implemented at Nelson Mandela University for students, but it seems none has worked. It is Women’s Month but incidents of violence are still being reported. Things are out of control. Despite the increasing attention now being paid to gender-based violence and the resources invested in trying to eliminate this phenomenon, statistics and data seem to indicate that these efforts are not having as great an impact as might have been hoped.

Our young women are dying because of the violence they suffer. We need an urgent solution to solve this issue.

What we as women are facing are the issues of masculinity, gender and violence.

It is high time we involved men in resolving this issue. For me, gender violence must not look at women only.

We need men, we need our brothers, our fathers.

We tend to focus more how we as women should be treated, taught our worth, our value, but what about men? What are we teaching men? We need seminars or dialogues that focus on men.

Let our young brothers grow up knowing what it really mean to be a men, how to conduct themselves as men.

At the end of day both men and woman were created as humans, so we cannot look at one gender only, we cannot exclude one and involve the other, as vice-chancellor Sbongile Muthwa of Nelson Mandela University said on Monday, addressing marching students.

Our institution is a mixed gender environment and we cannot change it into a girls/women-only institution, which would undermine the theory of democracy itself on the principle of equality for all.

We are exposed to men in our homes, on the streets, everywhere. Therefore, we need to know that what triggers men to act the way they do. What comes into their minds?

In order to fix the problem that women are facing, we first need to fix our men, build the kind of men that our daughters and sisters would be safe with because at the end of the day we are all humans.

We need to acknowledge that gender inequalities are fundamental to the prevalence of gender-based violence and that these inequalities are embedded in complex and multidimensional relationships between men and women.

Whether by choice or not, we must engage both men and women in changing these unequal gender relations.

We need to acknowledge that this is not only a woman’s problem, only dealt with by asserting women’s right or women’s empowerment.

For me, involving men and boys will therefore involve the question of dominant and hegemonic masculinities.

We cannot ignore the relationship of power and African structures of patriarchy that turn out to be dangerous to women in our society.

Philile Faith Shange, NMU student