Page 27 - SCAT GBV Report - Addressing Gender-Based Violence - 2021
P. 27

 It is recognised that some customary practices promote and legitimise discrimination against women and LGBTIQ people, by placing men in superior positions and reinforcing strict social and economic roles that are unequal and based on sex, sexuality and/or gender20. Alongside religious mores, customary practices construct gender relations in a community, for example through marriage and death rituals in which women are given a lower status and value than men. These can have the effect of silencing the discriminations women experience within heteronormative familial settings, and justifying masculine entitlement and control over women and girls.
When you get married you must have different gear, where you wear a blanket, a scarf, a doek, long skirts, even if it’s summer ... You then need to change your name, we give you a name when you get married, and you must have children as well. And you must cook for everyone, wash all those dishes. When your husband dies, you wear black clothes and you wear those for 6 months to a year. And a man will never do that. You mustn’t talk to anybody, you must stay at home, or if you have to work you have to take leave. Your life stands still when your husband dies ... It makes you vulnerable because if your man dies the brother must take over – take over you and your children, meaning sleep with you. You don’t have power and it’s still happening.
Sandra Ntshona, CBO stakeholder.
A woman must hold a burning spear by the sharp side when you get married. You will never want to retaliate in some things because you are going to embarrass your family. You need to be submissive, like holding a burning spear. Whatever happens there, you need to not tell anybody. You need to keep everything under the blanket. Nobody must see. Nobody must know. People internalise that.
Nobuzwe Mofokeng, ILDA.
Culture is involved, stigmatisation is involved, so we need to cut across those terms. It’s not really easy because sometimes people will say, ‘you are a black woman, you know that men are the head of the family, women need to be submissive, the bible says ....’.
Misiwe Ngqondela, CBO stakeholder.
Sometimes it is religion that is saying, ‘a man is like God, he’s the God in the house, and you can’t talk back, you can’t do this, you can’t do that’. Nobuzwe Mofokeng, ILDA.
The sphere of tradition is a critical site for interventions by LDAs, and how to do so most appropriately and effectively is a subject of ongoing navigation and reflection. Rural CBOs hold different positions on how to engage with traditional authorities and their optimal role in dealing with cases of gender discrimination and violence.
  20.
If we are talking to structures like traditional councils – because that’s where we know patriarchy is entrenched – what’s the approach? Do you go there with gloves on or gloves off? Is there a middle ground? Tshenolo Tshoaedi, key informant.
It is very difficult for these organisations to work in rural communities because, before you go to a survivor’s home you have to report your presence to the inkhosi of the area ... And you have to respect traditional structures like family heads or indunas. They have to navigate through these.
Welekazi Stofile, key informant.
For example, interpretations of the payment of lobola as granting men the right to control and treat their female partners as their property (CSVR, 2016), and ukuthwala, referring to the abduction of young girls for the purpose of forced marriage.
“Finish this Elephant”: Rural Community Organisations’ Strategic Approaches to Addressing GBV 27




















































































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