Karen Graaff

NUMEROUS studies have noted South Africa is an extremely violent country with high rates of interpersonal violence and homicide.

Along with this, the rates of sexual violence are high, with a report by the Medical Research Council showing 25% of women in a study had been raped.

Although rates of violence are extremely high in South Africa, the ways this plays out are similar in many ways to other countries.

Around the world most violence is perpetrated by men, often against women, but to an even greater extent against other men.

Despite this knowledge, most attempts to combat violence tend to focus on women.

Typically they provide support to women after they’ve been attacked or they suggest ways to avoid or prevent violence by changing women’s behaviour or the clothes they wear.

These interventions have had little impact on the levels of violence in South Africa, which suggests alternatives need to be investigated. One possibility would be to specifically work with men as a form of violence prevention.

This was the focus of my recent doctoral study, which primarily looked at the effect of working with men.