16 Days can make a difference

ACOMMON – and seemingly not entirely irrational – response to the 16 Days of Activism campaign against the abuse of women and children is that it doesn’t appear to make much difference.

Year after year we are confronted with statistics, arguments and appeals – for compassion, maturity, and funds for organisations on the front line of this cruel social battle – and every year the abuse continues.

But we have only to think of the alternative – of doing nothing and pretending that not focusing attention on a costly social problem will miraculously yield a better outcome – to realise that however incremental the impact, it really is worth the effort.

There is this, too: the violence these 16 days seek to highlight is universal.

In an opinion piece on IOL this week, Lesego Makgatho expressed it like this: “The woman in the suburbs, who wakes up to her croissant and blue cheese for breakfast, is as susceptible to violence as the woman from Alexandra Township… (it) has nothing to do with race or demographics. It can happen to anyone.”

South Africa’s history of humiliation and abuse, and the poverty that is umbilically linked to it, may offer a way to understanding some of the origins of the problem and why it continues, but it does not relieve us of the difficult challenge of confronting what is a pervasive culture of aggressive maleness in all communities.

If it is, as people like to say, a “cultural thing”, research shows that male violence is markedly undiscriminating, a “culture” we all have a stake in changing, for we are all affected by it. If there is cause for optimism it is that we know from history that human behaviour is alterable, and that activism aimed at altering it can be effective.

We urge everybody, male and female, old and young, rich and poor, to take this campaign seriously. You can make a difference.