Survivors need support
We should not expect them to jump through hoops to prove they were subjected to abuse
ON SUNDAY night, March 3, many South Africans bore witness to a video of what appears to be Bongekile Simelane – stage-name, Babes Wodumo – being assaulted by her boyfriend, Mandla “Mampintsha” Maphumulo.
The video was digitally broadcast via her Instagram account and thrust the ongoing discussion around domestic violence and gender-based violence back into the public domain.
Subsequent to the incident, Mampintsha has been arrested, released on bail and laid counter charges against Simelane. Social media and popular media have been agog.
The alleged assault and the ongoing testimony of survivors indicate a broader issue related to gender-based violence, taking it from the private domain of the home, where most incidents of gender-based violence occur, into the domain of society at large.
The digital broadcast of the event via Instagram Live speaks to Simelane’s need to legitimise prior and ongoing allegations of abuse she experienced at the hands of Mampintsha. But more importantly, it speaks to the need for many survivors of gender-based violence having to go out of their way to prove the veracity of their claims.
It is also concerning that prior allegations of domestic violence were largely forgotten, with little societal support offered to Simelane to protect her against the abuse at the time.
This lack of societal support is compounded in the instance of most women who do not have the public profile Simelane has. Research indicates that most women, who have no public profile in society, encounter hurdles within their own families, their communities, from the SAPS, the National Prosecuting Authority and during the judicial process in being protected from intimate partner, gender-based violence.
Meaning that the system itself conspires against these women to perpetuate the abuse they experience.
A report by Statistics South Africa, Crime Against Women in South Africa 2018, found that 3.3% of men and 2.3% of women think it is acceptable for a man to hit a woman.
According to the 2016-17 Victims of Crime Report by Stats SA, 250 out of every 100000 women were victims of a sexual offence. The public discourse that followed Simelane’s Instagram Live broadcast echoed this.
Viewed from a broader human rights perspective, Section 9 in Chapter2 of the South African Constitution, the Bill of Rights, provides for the right to equality.
This clause specifically provides that neither the State nor any person may discriminate against any person on the basis of gender or sex, among numerous other grounds.
South Africa cannot truly claim to be an equal society for women when we subject them to epic amounts of gender-based violence – one of the highest rates in the world – and in turn fail to protect and provide redress and justice when they come forward and report these incidents to family, communities and the SAPS.
South Africa’s entire constitutional democracy is based on the freedom, equality and dignity of all. This notion is a fallacy within a context of dignity being stripped with relentless sexual and physical onslaughts against women that all too often end in death.
Women cannot truly claim freedom within a context where their lives and safety are under constant threat, and equality is unrealistic when a particular gender carries the overwhelming burden of abuse.
The foundation of South Africa’s constitutional democracy can only have true meaning if we have a society that protects women from abuse and ensures justice is dispensed.
The foundation of our constitutional democracy only has meaning for women when obstacles of culture, religion and socialisation – which often dictates that women are subservient and solely responsible for nurturing and keeping the family unit together, usually leading to blockages from leaving toxic and abusive relationships – are dismantled and the equality of women upheld.
For this to occur, South Africa’s people have to rethink the obstacles we place in the way of women who report gender-based violence, and not expect them to jump through hoops to prove that they were subjected to a well-documented scourge.
The SAPS, family, the NPA and our judicial system will have to treat these women with empathy, and the perpetrators with the contempt they deserve. We will then not need a survivor of gender-based violence to broadcast the assault she was subjected to on the internet for the world to see, and for us as a nation to only then take note and re-ignite the same conversation we’ve been having for the past 25 years.
If we are serious about women’s freedom, dignity and equality, we will capacitate our police to protect, while actively investigating allegations of sexual violence, and treating the survivor with the requisite respect as well as empathy, and we will ensure that the criminal justice system adequately deals with perpetrators.
The rest of the system, which includes us as members of society, will not conspire against these women and perpetuate the cycle of abuse.
South Africa cannot truly claim to be an equal society for women when we subject them to abuse
Gushwell Brooks is the communications co-ordinator at the South African Human Rights Commission