Abstract
Domestic violence against women is a serious health and safety problem facing women around the world. Scholars of domestic violence have identified demographic factors such as age, number of children, family structure, unemployment, substance abuse, stress factors within the family, male partner’s educational attainment and poverty, as closely associated with domestic violence. While these factors have gained scholarly recognition, there is a dominant narrative among victims of domestic violence that “alcohol is responsible” for abusive relationships in Mamelodi, a black township near Pretoria, South Africa. Using the empirical data from Mamelodi, this article probes the narratives of female victims of domestic violence. The paper uses qualitative data in its analysis.
Highlights
Domestic violence against women is a serious health and safety problem facing women around the world
Scholars of domestic violence have identified demographic factors such as age, number of children, family structure, unemployment, substance abuse, stress factors within the family, male partner’s educational attainment and poverty, as closely associated with domestic violence. While these factors have gained scholarly recognition, there is a dominant narrative among victims of domestic violence that “alcohol is responsible” for abusive relationships in Mamelodi, a black township in Pretoria, South Africa
This paper examines women’s narrative on alcohol consumption as the cause of domestic violence in relationships
Summary
Domestic violence against women is a serious health and safety problem facing women around the world. Scholars of domestic violence have identified demographic factors such as age, number of children, family structure, unemployment, substance abuse, stress factors within the family, male partner’s educational attainment and poverty, as closely associated with domestic violence While these factors have gained scholarly recognition, there is a dominant narrative among victims of domestic violence that “alcohol is responsible” for abusive relationships in Mamelodi, a black township in Pretoria, South Africa. African responses to the liquor trade generated a discourse of “the African character” underlined by the abuse of liquor To those who hold this view, alcoholism is part of a pattern of deviate behaviour of the Bantu (Africans) who already displayed criminal behaviour (Mager 2004). Apart from the apparent sabotage by these individuals, it was gratifying among black people in those days to flout laws made by the apartheid state – it was civil disobedience against what they saw as an unjust system. Mager (2004) noted that there was still that real excitement of drinking in shebeens and breaking the “white man’s law”
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