Last year in September six teen boys, aged from 13 to 16, were arrested after being caught gang raping a mentally handicapped 30-year-old woman in Southfield, Cape Town, in an incident which shocked both the community and wider society to the core. It isn’t the first time something like this happened. In May 2012, four Soweto boys were arrested for gang raping a mentally disabled teenage girl. President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his recent ‘family meeting’ described gender-based violence and femicide as a second pandemic alongside the coronavirus pandemic.
It is worth unpacking firstly why the terms ‘gender-based violence’ and ‘femicide’ may not be particularly helpful in aiding us get to the heart of the problem, but secondly to examine the factors which contribute to this second pandemic and why they are so deeply linked to the poor state of the economy, unemployment and food insecurity, all factors which have been exacerbated by an extended lockdown.
Definitions of femicide vary according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime because there is no commonly agreed upon definition of what constitutes femicide. The World Health Organization adds that collecting correct data on femicide is challenging because most countries do not have information on the relationship between the victim and perpetrator or, more importantly, the motive of the murderer and because of this a broad definition of femicide – “any killings of women or girls”- is often used. The same problems can be found trying to find a consistent and helpful definition of gender-based violence.
One way to illustrate this is the assassination-style killings of young women that sometimes happen in gang neighbourhoods. Notionally, the press will report on the scourge of gender-based violence and femicide, and miss that these young women, like their male counterparts in gangs, are often murdered if they defect from or betray the gang. It often obscures more than enlightens to bring the violence and murder of women under one poorly defined umbrella.
However, there is serious problem with intimate-partner violence that is linked to a variety of intergenerational factors including childhood trauma, community violence, unemployment and food insecurity.
The Drakenstein Child Health Study was a longitudinal study conducted at two primary care clinics (TC Newman and Mbekweni) in Paarl in which 992 women(those with complete data) were surveyed and studied between March 2012 and March 2015. It was found that antenatal maternal depression, intimate-partner violence and childhood trauma were prevalent and associated with food insecurity.
So, let’s relate this study with the stories of the boys who gang raped the two mentally handicapped women and plot a trajectory based on what we know. A boy who is born to a poor and food insecure mother, who in all likelihood also came from a background of food insecurity and therefore poor cognitive development. The mother, because of antenatal depression and other mental health issues associated with food insecurity, struggles to bond with her child leading to neglect of a child. The child will have impaired foetal and infant growth, and poor infant cognitive development. That child will act up, often attracting the ire of financially stressed adults who themselves suffered from poor development and neglect, and will often be at the receiving end of sometimes brutal violence from people who are supposed to care for the child. That will be the first way in which that child is initiated into a world of profound violence.
That child then may be exposed to intimate-partner and family violence as research shows that those with a predisposition to violence are often set off by environmental stressors, especially financial stress. The child also has a high chance of either being sexually groomed (uncles and older siblings watching violent pornography with them) or being the one in three children who are sexually abused. Now thoroughly initiated into a world of violence, cognitively and emotionally impaired, and suffering childhood trauma and neglect, that child will most likely step out of the door into a community beset by violence and, in some neighbourhoods, gangsterism. This is an added layer of being initiated into violence and sociopathy. I’ve spoken to social workers and they sometimes tell me stories of men publicly hitting women and being egged on by both male and female members of the community in full view of children on the street.
When taken together this neglect, trauma, abuse, and initiation into violence fermented in an environment of food insecurity, unemployment, often deeply misogynistic and sexist attitudes, and desensitisation, it is no wonder then that not only do we have high levels of crime in South Africa, but also the sadism and brutality that comes along with that crime. It is all deeply interlinked but affects women and children more adversely because they are more vulnerable.
It makes sense in a sick and twisted way, that in a country where such a milieu exists, young teenage boys would be capable of such heinous crimes, and the sadistic and brutal rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana would take place.
This is why it is important to understand why the extended lockdown will be so devastating. Most of the media has covered the loss of jobs and businesses and the rising public debt but failed to really consider the downstream costs. The loss of jobs and the sharp increase in food insecurity will have generational effects that will reverberate, causing not just an increase in racialised inequality, but sharp increases in crime, especially against women and children. This will put additional pressure on police resources, the criminal justice system, social services and even the schooling system.
There are horrifying social costs and economic costs the country will have to reckon with.
It sounds incredibly crude at first glance but if the country does not make a meaningful change in trajectory, we will all be immiserated, especially women and children. The Johannesburg-based political and economic risk consultancy Eunomix suggests a ‘dual track’ strategy of developing and maintaining high levels of social support (linking antenatal care with nutritional programmes for poor pregnant mothers for example) and paying for it by adopting am aggressive special economic zone policy which boosts growth and employment. The Institute of Race Relations itself echoes this and urges a focus on policy that will boost both growth and employment. There is simply no other way our cash-strapped country can deal with the elevated levels of food insecurity and joblessness and the resulting social upheaval and problems that result from all of this.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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