Seeking justice for men

IT HAS been a year since Patrick Shai committed suicide at his home.

He was a pathfinder and pioneer in the gender-based violence sector.

He was among the first to respond to the unusual pleas of abused men, however few, for help.

Statistics show that more women than men are victims of abuse and violence. This is indisputable evidence.

Ironically, there are no figures on the number of men who are subjected to abuse and violence by women.

Worse, more men die at the hands of other men weekly. But this significant point is condoned in the attempt to highlight gender-based violence against women and children.

Some have to face allegations of rape and or intimate partner violence by their wives and partners.

Often, they may be thrown into police cells, with no evidence.

Shai was aware that men cry in the dark.

After all, they have been taught indod’ayikhali (tigers do not cry). To be a man you must not shed tears, no matter the trauma and pain.

Few go to a police station because they will be ridiculed and mocked by the police, male and female. It is taboo for a man to admit to being beaten up by his partner.

Some relationships and marriages are strongly mismatched from the beginning. This results in regrets, mutual blame, simmering tension, and conflict that, ultimately, explodes into anger and violence.

In many sad instances, men are the first to throw the punch or hurl the verbal bricks. This happens when they feel that they are losing control. It could be at the office or place of employment.

Above all, it is when they lose control at home that they lash out, verbally, emotionally, psychologically, or even physically. And this hurts the women, mothers, and their children. Nobody benefits from the abuse and violence because it simply means things have spun out of control.

Some men hold on to the mismatch without fail. They do not wish to lose their status, if any, of being indoda yomuzi, that is, a married man who is the head of the family.

Others do not wish to be separated from their children.

Long before Shai launched his Khuluma Ndoda – Speak Up, Man men’s social movement, some men had resigned themselves to accepting and tolerating abuse by their wives or partners. Shai arrived on the scene following his acting role as Thabang in the TV series, Soul City, where he played the role of an abusive husband.

In real life, beating a wife to a pulp was normal for a man. He had grown up seeing his role model men do it as part of normal family life. Yet all that changed when he played the role of Thabang. It became his turning point. He transformed himself into an ambassador to raise awareness about the horrors of violence against women and children.

He believed that the dastardly toxic male behaviour could be changed. As soon as he exorcised his demons, following counselling sessions, he realised that men were also subjected to abuse. Thus, Shai embarked on his Damascus road to fight all forms of gender-based violence. However, the narrative on gender-based violence was confined to men who abused women and children abuse. Some women, feminists, and gender activists refused to entertain the notion that men also suffered abuse – at the hands of women.

Shai addressed the one-dimensional approach when he spoke about the “emasculation of men”. But his message was deliberately distorted and misrepresented to suggest that he desired to condone male violence and thus promote, protect, and preserve patriarchy. Of course, this unavoidably hurt him, dented his self-confidence, and threw him into spiritual turmoil. He was up against a formidable network that did not tolerate any view that upset the narrative: only men were the abusers!

In the early years of Khuluma Ndoda in the late 1990s and early 2000s, his insight allowed Shai to encourage and support men who were forced into silence about what they were subjected to. Unavoidably, this saw him quarrel with influential activists who felt that he was misrepresenting the narrative or failing to understand the issues.

Over time, the issue of abused men was relegated to the margins. Thus Shai’s integral message to highlight the plight of abused men was watered down. He, too, ultimately conformed to the narrative that it was men who were guilty of abuse and violence against women and children. The spaces for men to cry have grown smaller. Nobody is interested in hearing stories of men abused by women. It does not fit into the popular narrative of #AllMenAreTrash.