We chat to three South African men who are doing their bit for feminism
‘I can’t say I’m a feminist, because I don’t think I’m doing enough.’
For decades, the fight against gender inequality and gender-based violence has been placed squarely on the shoulders of women. But it seems the tide is turning. These three men have spent their careers bringing males to the table because they realise that the only way we can live in a society that is equal and free of violence is to change the behaviour of men.
Richard Maboso has summited Mount Kilimanjaro a total of six times, a feat that most from his village of Luphisi in Mpumalanga could only dream of. You might think it’s Richard’s thirst for adventure that has taken him to the top of Africa, but the actual motivation is much more practical – and inspiring. He does it for sanitary pads. Every Mandela Day, Richard embarks on Trek4Mandela, during which he and his team climb the mountain to raise money and create awareness for his Caring4Girls menstrual hygiene programme, which is part of the NPO he started, Imbumba Foundation.
Richard recalls how his family of five (he has three siblings) had to live on R500 a month – his mom was a single parent and earned a living as a domestic worker. ‘Life wasn’t easy; we didn’t have much,’ he says. He has vivid memories of having nothing to eat when he came back from school, hungry. But he also remembers the kindness of women in his life. ‘My mother was a giver, even though she had so little to give. I also remember how our neighbour, a grandmother, would
make sure my siblings and I had something to eat, even if it was only a cup of beans. Or how my teacher Mrs Themba saw the torn clothes I wore to school, and bought me two new pairs of pants that I would wear for the next two years.’ It was looking back at these instances of kindness that made Richard realise that you can’t live for yourself. ‘I have to live for others,’ he says.
One day, he overheard a telling conversation between his mom and niece. ‘My niece had been complaining about being in pain and didn’t understand what was wrong. It turned out she was about to get her first period.’ His mother told the girl it was inappropriate for her to talk about such things, especially in front of him, a man. ‘I thought, but what if I’m the only person who can help her? What happens to young girls who are being raised by single fathers, grandfathers or their brothers?’
He started researching the subject, and what he discovered shocked him. ‘Many girls throughout Africa miss up to 50 days of school every year due to lack of sanitary products. This means that, on average, a young girl can miss up to 300 days (almost a year) over six years.’ Future lawyers, doctors and teachers weren’t getting the valuable education they needed.
In response, Richard launched Caring4Girls: a project that would provide sanitary products to young girls in need and open a dialogue around this ‘taboo’ subject. To raise money and awareness for his initiative, Richard and his friend Sisbusiso Vilane, the renowned adventurer and motivational speaker, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro on Mandela Day 2012. After their first summit, they were able to assist two schools, but they had also captured the attention of individuals, corporate sponsors and the media. Richard has summited Mount Kilimanjaro six times, taking more than 300 people in total with him – and the Caring4Girls programme now reaches over 950 000 girls.
‘It’s always great when you reach the summit, but I can’t help but think about the girls we haven’t reached; the one who won’t be going to school tomorrow because she doesn’t have sanitary pads.’ For the 2020 Mandela Day expedition, under the theme of Unity in Diversity, climbers will summit Mount Kilimanjaro from all six routes with six teams, each representing a colour of the SA flag, (a first) with the goal of reaching more than two million young girls.
Richard admits that before I’d approached him for this article, he’d never thought of himself as a feminist. ‘There are so many problems that women are facing,’ he says. He feels more men need to come out in support of women. But, he says, we are seeing a shift.
‘At a dialogue we had for Menstrual Hygiene Day, we brought boys and girls under one roof and a boy named Naphtal Sanele Dube was shocked to hear how bad it was for young girls in his community.’ Naphtal then asked the foundation for three bags of sanitary pads. ‘He had convinced his friends to go with him and distribute them to those in need of them in his village.’ You just need one person to plant the seed and inspire others – Richard is hopeful it’s just the beginning.
Bafana Khumalo has been questioning the way women are excluded in society since his early days of activism. ‘Within the anti-apartheid struggle, our female colleagues were taking the same risks in mobilising against the government, yet they weren’t allowed to take formal leadership positions within the movement.’
Bafana didn’t have the typical
‘I will stand alongside my sisters.’
upbringing that his peers had. His mother died when he was eight years old and he was essentially raised by his father. ‘In African cultures, when the mother passes away, traditionally, a sister takes on the care of the children. But my father would hear none of that.’ Bafana’s father taught him to cook and clean up after himself. ‘There’s this perception that only women can take care of children and it’s the biggest lesson I learnt from my father: don’t capitulate to societal norms.’
After the fall of the apartheid regime, Bafana was appointed by President Thabo Mbeki as one of the few male commissioners on the Commission for Gender Equality. Whenever gender was mentioned, he says, people assumed you were talking about women. ‘I would invite entire government departments to workshops about gender equality – and only women would attend. Surely if we’re talking about gender equality, we’re talking about the relationship between men and women? So why aren’t men in these spaces?’
The primary objective of the commission had been to respond to the scourge of gender-based violence and, whether it was law reform or raising awareness, the focus was always on women. ‘A question was nagging at me: women are not committing violent acts against themselves, so why must they carry the burden of stopping gender-based violence?’ He knew that he had to find a way to engage with men.
Through his work, Bafana met Dean Peacock (see opposite page), who also believed that gender relations in SA could not be changed without bringing men into the debate. The two, along with gender rights activists Shamillah Wilson and Dumisani Rebombo, established
NPO Sonke Gender Justice in 2006.
Sonke’s aim was to be more overtly political. Its first case, and one of the most important ones for Bafana, was the Jacob Zuma rape trial. ‘After coming forward with her allegations against Mr Zuma, the late Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (then known simply as Khwezi) was the victim of many attacks, not only from men but also women,’ he says. ‘Power was being used to protect masculinity, so we demonstrated outside the South Gauteng High Court, and we wrote opinion pieces criticising the handling of this case.’
Despite the insults and death threats, they stood their ground – even when Zuma was found not guilty. Three years later, they were thrust into the headlines yet again, for taking on Julius Malema, then president of the ANC Youth League. In a speech at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, he made light of the ordeals of rape victims, targeting Khwezi. Sonke took him to the Equality Court, and won. Malema was ordered to apologise and donate R50 000 to People Opposing Women Abuse. These are two of Bafana’s proudest moments: showing what civil society can do to hold powerful figures accountable.
Although Bafana doesn’t consider himself a feminist (‘how can we as men understand the female experience?’), he does see himself as pro-feminism. ‘Feminism is about challenging power and accepting that human beings are equal.’ He believes the world must change and that it starts with what we define as masculinity. ‘Manhood isn’t about strength, power and control; it’s about being vulnerable, caring and loving our fellow human beings.’
Dean Peacock first became aware of the issues surrounding masculinity and violence when he was in matric, through his involvement in the End Conscription campaigns. This was in 1985: South Africa was in a state of emergency and young men like him were finishing up their schooling, only to be sent to Angola to fight in a secret war, or to South African townships.
After studying at the University of California, Berkeley in the US, he began doing work with homeless and runaway youth in San Francisco and Managua, Nicaragua. ‘The vast majority were living on the streets to escape violence in their own homes, only to have more of the same there,’ Dean says. ‘They’d end up raped, addicted to drugs and often HIV-positive [at the time, a death sentence].’ He wanted to find a way to stop the violence first, so he could prevent this from happening.
‘My then-girlfriend had been volunteering at a women’s crisis centre and told me about an organisation called Men Overcoming Violence.’ The collective offered group work programmes to men who are violent and abusive in their intimate relationships. Through these programmes, Dean got to thinking about how engaging men to end men’s violence was important political work that he, as a man who had grown up surrounded by the violence of apartheid, was well situated to do. Dean volunteered for Men Overcoming Violence, began sitting in on dialogues and worked in prisons and juvenile jails. ‘I‘d heard many men say that they were deeply ashamed of their violence and wanted to understand where it came from and how to stop abusing their partners. Many were still dealing with the trauma of being exposed to domestic violence as children.’ He offers a harrowing example of this. One young man had suffered horrible abuse at the hands of his parents: they would punish him by tying him to a chair, beating him and leaving him there. Then, as an adult, his girlfriend lent his car to his friend without asking him first, so he tied her to a chair and beat her. ‘He said to me, “Help me understand: why did I do the one thing in the world that I know is the worst thing you can do to another human being – to someone I love?”’
When asked why he wanted to volunteer at Men Overcoming Violence, Dean didn’t have to think about it: ‘I wanted to learn skills that I could bring back to South Africa.’ After seven years, that’s exactly what he did. After working with various HIV and gender NGOs, Dean founded Sonke Gender Justice along with Bafana Khumalo and others in 2006.
‘I have considered myself a feminist for a long time because for me it’s a commitment to intersectional social justice, to listening and working under the leadership of women’s rights activists, to demanding the government take action on their obligations to address violence and advance gender equality.’
After a decade of hard work at Sonke, he made the decision to step down as NPO director. ‘It felt clear to me that Sonke needed new leadership that was more representative of the new South Africa than me, a middle-aged white man,’ he says. But it didn’t mean he was abandoning the cause. A Brazilian NGO called Promundo was one of the few organisations in the early 2000s doing ambitious work with men around gender equality and gender-based violence. ‘We had partnered with them quite a few times, so I started talking to them about a possible role.’
Although he comes home to Cape Town as often as he can, Dean and his family have settled in Washington, DC, where he works as Senior Advisor for Rights and Advocacy at Promundo. For Dean, initiatives like Promundo and Sonke are essential when it comes to fighting for gender equality and against gender-based violence – because men are the perpetrators, you need to engage with them to end it.
‘Like many men in South Africa and the US, women I care deeply about have been affected by violence, and so it’s a constant source of motivation to continue this type of work.’