The Value of Re-socializing Boys and Men for Positive Gender Relations to Curb Gender-Based Violence and Femicide in South Africa

Abstract

Recognizing the gravity of gender inequality and gender-based violence phenomena that date back to the apartheid era, successive post-1994 governments in South Africa have enacted several legislative and policy frameworks to address these challenges. From the 1996 Constitution, which calls for equality of all persons before the law, to several policy and development frameworks such as the Policy for Women Empowerment and Gender Equality and the National Development Plan (NDP 2030), there is no shortage of state interventions rooted in human rights aimed at a non-sexist and gender-equal South Africa. These rights affirm the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom from gender-based violence. In spite of these, women and girls in South Africa continue to suffer from male violence at alarming rates, prompting President Cyril Ramaphosa to declare gender-based violence and femicide a national disaster in 2020. This resulted in the National Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Strategic Plan 2020–2030, which provides a coherent national framework to support South Africa in meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal targets 5.1–5.3 and 16.1–16.2. However, beyond gender equality policy and legislative provisions, and the usual challenges of implementing them effectively, there has been very little engagement with male mindsets and perceptions of the female gender, which actually fuels gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) in South Africa. What men think of women informs their behavior toward women. These thoughts include a world view based on African patriarchy, which is also used as a cultural/philosophical basis for resisting the notion of gender equality as a Western imposition that goes against the African patriarchal world view and gender relations. This chapter used secondary and primary data from South Africa to engage with these concerns with a view to making a case for re-socializing boys and young men in the country to change their mental image of girls and women. The overarching goal is to lay the cultural basis for reimagining gender relations to enable positive masculine behavior in ways that will help tackle the scourge of GBVF in South Africa. This is the missing link in the disconnect between policy and practice on gender inequality and gender-based violence in Africa.