Dr Saths Cooper from the Psychological Society of SAsays we can see a change from bad to better in terms of violent crime against women and children in our lifetime. “This is a very violent society, it has been violent since its inception and the period of democracy has not reduced that level of violence. In fact it has probably increased in some respects and there has been more media coverage of incidents of violence, in particular rape. Rape has been with us for a hell of along time and very few meaningful steps have been taken to deal with rape and serious violence.” “I think it has more to do with the power relations to society. Relations in society tend to be dominated by who is seen as more powerful. The institution of patriarchy comes undone when we look at it in terms of rape. If we consider the fact that there are a significant number of people out there who have grown up in women headed households – so it’s a mixture of power relations; it’s a mixture of fractured socialization in our society; it’s a mixture of living in a violent society, confused masculinity, as well as confused sexuality. These factors combine to play a role in the horrible scourge of rape and violent assault against children and women.” “We are a very aggressive society, very violent society, and an incidence like this (referring to the Anene Booysen rape) tends to demonstrate that we need to do something quite serious. The prosecutorial authorities tend to be lax, the court system tends to be inefficient, and rape suspects will find themselves proliferating in our prisons because over time we have become use to rape as something that happens rather than something that ought not to happen.” “We need to look further, in our schools we don’t teach our children how to relate and how to have their needs met. We also shy away from dealing with sexuality…that doesn’t imply that we ought to go out there and take by force because we have a sexual need. There are other ways to deal with sexuality besides the one that appears to be more common these days.” “Poverty in itself is not something that lends itself to broken values. People who are poor are not necessarily the people that tend to rape and pillage. This is a cross class factor in our society and we must be careful not to equate poverty with alienation. And alienation happens across class in our society. So being poor is not a condition for becoming aggressive, violent…there are other ingredients, it has to do with the highly charged race relations we have had in our country before. The highly stratified way that we look at male and female interactions, the inability to mediate that meaningfully, and realize that the other is a person and we need to treat them the way we expect to be treated.”
“Our schooling needs to change, it needs to teach relationships, respect for the self and then respect for the other”
Dr Cooper says violence has a way of repeating itself, “if violence gets done to me and I have witnessed it working then it is easier to commit those acts.”
How can we change our society into one that is more respectful of women and relationships?“We need to start with our child rearing practices. We need to start with our schools. We need to actually change the conception of female and the views that we have that females are the lesser beings and therefore can be treated in any way. If I have a deep insecurity about myself…I do not know who I am. I do not like who I am…I will engage in certain activities to make me feel better about my warped socialisation and sense of self.You will not find a rapist with a good egoand a good sense of self.
Can we see this change in our lifetime?“Wecan! Mothers need to change how they deal with their male children. Treating the female and male child the same. Not expecting that the female will be subservient…we ought to change our relationship behaviour…when hormones are running amok we ought to be able to tap into that and enable those children to relate to others. Our schooling needs to change, it needs to teach relationships, respect for the self and then respect for the other.”
Why did Anene Booysen brutal rape and murder attract so much attention?“I think it attracted more attention because it came so soon after the huge outpourings we saw in India. And after that it got removed from our headlines because there were other horrific rapes that happened, then Oscar Pistorius removed all of that from the headlines.We are a very fickle media country. Our memories are very short; we don’t focus on things that ought to be focused on. We deal more in the sensation of the next sale rather than say how do we turn this around to become more edified. More educational. That informational role in media must be played all the time. We need to look at the societal factors.”
“I think we have lost a large sense of our humanity….we don’t recognize that a hurt somewhere is a hurt to oneself as well. If integrity is assailed, if there is an assault on the individual anywhere it is an assault to the self. We tend to seek the easiest way out and block it out of our memories. It’s easier then to say ‘it’s those people who do it’ rather than recognize that it is our problem. It is a South African problem and we need to deal with violence and we can’t continue to have these waves and put it off until we reach December and then say we will have 16 days of recognition.
“The best amongst us will burst out from time to time because of conditions. But do they burst out in violence or a verbal expression of what is making them angry and frustrated Those that act out their anger, we need to focus on that rather than condemn them as evil. We need to look underneath that and try understand why did that person do that. By trying to understand we are helping our society to come to grips with this epidemic.”
– By
