Take control of your life
Anelisa Mtebese is an alumni groundBREAKER, who led the gender-based violence project at KwaNobuhle Y-Centre in the Eastern Cape during 2014. She is currently doing her internship under the Media Y’s department at loveLife and she is also a student at Boston Media House, an opportunity she was granted by Vuselela Media. When she was a groundBREAKER, she wrote a story on gender-based violence which saw her win an award as the second-best citizen journalist and a learnership at Boston Media House. She shared her experience as a groundBREAKER and journalist:
The story I did was about a girl from the area I grew up in who was abused by her boyfriend. It started small, with her being slapped by the boyfriend because she went to the shop and came back late; he then forced her to sleep with him. Eventually it worsened; he started hitting her with pieces of wood, hammers and all manner of things. She fell pregnant with his child and the abuse went on to a point where the guy forced her to sleep with him and his other girlfriend while she was pregnant. He continued to beat her up after she gave birth to their child. They separated and she only got out of the relationship after the guy beat her up so badly — she was blinded in one eye and he tore her clothes off, so she ran home naked and partly blind. Her parents took her to the hospital and that was the last time she saw the guy.
At first when I did the story, I didn’t know the depth of her story. I didn’t realise what she was going through because everyone thought she was content in the relationship. I didn’t understand that she felt trapped and that she nearly died without anyone having anything to say about it.
When I started with the genderbased violence project, it was just a job. It was just me working, getting stories, reaching targets and all those things. But when I started talking to victims of gender-based violence, when I went out looking for stories, that’s when I realised that it was not just a job. It became my life; it was something that kept me awake at night!
One important thing that people need to know about gender-based violence is that it’s not about seeing someone being punched in the face — it’s not all about hitting someone physically. There’s more to genderbased violence than being hit; it’s also about men abusing other men by insulting them, and it’s about women insulting other women or being emotionally abusive towards each other. It’s also about killing someone’s rights and destroying that person. I also learned to first tell my story before covering other people’s stories, so they can relate to me and realise that I am not perfect.
The key lesson I have learned is that a lot of people still believe in the “old ways”. Many women still believe that if a man doesn’t beat you up, he doesn’t love you. It is also generally believed that you have to “endure” if you are in a relationship because that’s what our great-greatgrandmothers used to do. I never knew that people think standing up against gender-based violence means we are fighting against our cultures and traditions.
What I have learned is that with knowledge we can crack into these beliefs; knowledge is still power! When I used to do screenings, I realised that more old people would attend than young people and they would stand up and tell us that: “We didn’t know these things, we didn’t have this information and so we stayed in marriages because we didn’t want to defy and argue with our parents. We didn’t have facts or the knowledge that people actually die in their relationships because they had to endure and listen to what their mothers said to them.”
The older people would also tell us that we as the current generation are young, informed and should have the courage to say no. I now understand that if a person loves you, then they shouldn’t hurt you.
In my personal life I like talking to young girls and even on social media I try to address issues that affect young girls. I always say that if you stand up for yourself, if you choose to make life better for yourself, be independent so that no can bully you. I encourage girls to be independent so no one can own you and no one can have a say about how you live your life. So I always take the time to send such messages to young girls. I talk directly to young women and tell them that we shouldn’t blame it solely on the man. Let’s get to a point where we say “I take control of my life and there’s no space for a man to do anything harmful to me”. I try to talk to girls and tell them that they need to take control of their lives and have their own things, focus on school and focus on work. Once you start depending on a man for money, he is going to feel like he owns you and when he starts owning you, you will feel like you are dependent on him and then he abuses you; you will have nowhere to run to.
What has changed about me is that I do not only think about myself — I am no longer selfish. I am forward thinking about the consequences of my decisions and whether the decisions I make will hurt other people or not; I don’t just make decisions, I think them through. I take genderbased violence seriously and I think everyone should do so too. We need to take a stand against it, we need to be very intolerant of it. It’s not that everyone’s business should be our business — I am not saying we need to be nosy — but we need to look out for each other and start talking about these things. If you are a victim, you need to report and talk about it to be freed. When you keep quiet about gender-based violence, you give the perpetrator another chance to do it to you, your children or another person. Talking about it gives us a chance for the freedom and happiness we deserve.