Guys, Lets End Toxic Masculinity and GBV Now

A Ten-Point action plan

Written in honour of all South African Women on the National SA Women's Day,??9th?August 2022??

By Dr Peter Cruse, Head of healthcare, Henley Business School Africa, writing in his personal capacity.?

South Africa has made significant progress towards achieving gender equality since 1956, when 20,000 women marched to the Union Buildings on 9 August to protest against the extension of the pass laws to women. Historically, chauvinism, colonial and cultural patriarchy and the various artificial “glass ceilings” have caused women to struggle to achieve the workplace, corporate and societal levels that their talents merited.

As part of the global movement towards achieving gender equality by 2030, South Africa celebrates this year’s Women’s Month and the National Women’s’ Day on August 9th, 2022. (https://view.mail.getsmarter.com/?qs=d7ce653714320347afd4d860b23fd7e36ee2e333c8bbcecd0fff7267e36a5f2dde4ff6c7dfb55e239248290a48f55da94dfc003fe7a6eb0f940a8bacb7b4459ed04239b7b43c9063204f59dfbf96f22a )

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The SA Sunday Times only two days ago, (7th?August 2022) screamed a very alarming front page headline “No country for Women”. It bellowed in collective pain about how the growing SA crisis of Gender-based Violence (GBV) was a terrible price to pay for the political freedoms we have gained since the end of Apartheid.

Despite all the fancy populist ANC government promises, a fancy-sounding National Strategic Plan (NSP) and an equally fanciful increased medium-term budget allocation in a constrained time of Covid, higher fuel and food prices amidst an economic downturn, the harsh statistical truth is that the ANC has completely failed to implement any meaningful or impactful measures to change the status quo. It has patently failed in its fundamental constitutional duty, which is ?to protect the security and safety of SA’s women and children from the men that rape, beat and sexually abuse them.

The numbers don't lie. The headline article starkly states the truth, and, most importantly?- from a woman’s perspective:

“If you are a woman, you are not safe. Your life (and your child’s life) can be taken by men who do not recognise your value as a human being; who do not think your pain matters; who treat you as some contemptible, disposable thing.”

?It goes on to interview several leaders in the field, quoting Gender Links special adviser Colleen Lowe Morna as saying the government had not “put real leadership, energy and resources into reducing GBV”. The truth is that “we need to stop looking at these as mere statistics. These are real people whose lives have been taken away, violated, raped or traumatised. The newspaper then goes on to name, with photographs, thirteen actual people who were murdered, raped, sexually assaulted or otherwise brutalised by men.?

?Guys, it is time for we men (YES YOU with the Y Chromosomes and the Testosterone excess), to radically change our attitudes, show much more respect for women and change our behaviour towards women. Let’s step back together and totally reject any form of toxic masculinity or Gender-Based Violence (GBV). Real men don’t hurt or abuse women. real men do the very opposite: they love, care for and protect women?and children. They fight for them, not against them. They use their muscles and superior strength to protect women and children, not to hit them. They never harm or abuse women at all, whether physically, mentally, emotionally or socially.

The recent gang rape of several women at a Krugersdorp mine dump photo shoot, speaks otherwise about a prevailing culture of toxic masculinity among SA men.?We must change this toxic culture, systemically and quickly and permanently. Here is how:?

?Here is an implementable “Ten-Point Action Plan” to mitigate and reduce widespread GBV and address some of these issues. This a plan?which is feasible, affordable and with measurable?outcomes:

1.Let SA urgently declare a National State of Disaster to address GBV?today. ?This will give the legislators, prosecutors and police new impetus, accountability and measurable timelines and deadlines to meet the deliverables. These will focus on and address the underlying social, cultural, political and behavioural causal roots strategically, systemically and holistically. This will quickly show that this is an emergency?and that we are serious and committed?as a nation. It will demonstrate publicly that we have at last found the renewed energy and political will to act against toxic masculinity, GBV and abuse of women and children. It will also show that we are serious about addressing the toxic man culture, and the obviously asymmetric power structure?that has always existed between men and women and that we seriously mean to change

2.Let’s urgently review and redraft the National Strategic Plan. This will make it a more rigorous, vigorous, hard-hitting and effective plan than the weaker original 2020 version. The review must now urgently focus on measurable deadlines, timelines, clearly set out who does?what,?by when?and by whom, publicly define what are the specific deliverables, who is accountable, with regular oversight?and by whom, supervised who with KPI’s and by regular performance review, with regular reporting and monitoring?and both ministerial and parliamentary oversight.

3.Let’s urgently review and strengthen all the relevant weak enabling legislation and thereby remove any obstructing Police or NPA bureaucracy or weak operational processes which are?blocking our progress?against GBV. This may include?weak drafting of police and prosecuting authority powers, removing ambiguity in police processes and paperwork, abolishing wasteful inter-departmental “turf wars”, closing any possible “Stalingrad” delaying tactical and legal loopholes?for the accused ( such as dropping police docket cases because of the absence of the complainant’s signature), eliminate the individual discretion of weak or lazy or biased judges and make mandatory the prolonged sentencing of convicted criminals (Minimum 20 years plus or Life sentences to remove these undesirable sexual predators (and often repeat offenders) from the very homes where they abuse their families and from SA society permanently). But our jails are already full. Maybe we should reopen Robben Island and lock the worst of them away there forever. They will not be missed and society and women and children will be safer for their removal. They will have forfeited their right to live freely among us.

4.?Let’s review the medium term-budget of the GBV resource fund (R21bn in 2021)?and increase it by 100% to reflect our seriousness and?our firm collective intent to eradicate GBV- this compete unacceptable and antisocial behaviour.?Use this extra money to train, educate and sensitize thousands more special female GBV proactive (preventive) and reactive (investigative case workers) whether routine operatives, ?police officers or investigators, thereby also creating much-needed practical and useful new jobs and trained operatives.?

To fund this?increased investment and resourcing, money can be taken by virement away from our repeatedly underperforming, under-qualified, ineffective and vastly overpaid salary budget for the hundreds of incompetent but ANC deployed SA senior cabinet ministers and civil servants and police (those who earn above a certain annual threshold, say R1m gross CTC per annum).?Then supplement their?now much lower base salaries with performance-related incentives and bonuses for achieving tough but attainable and predetermined annual targets for GBV arrests, convictions and other measurable deliverables.

These new deliverables should include improved case detection and throughput,?effective evidence collection, case management and docketing, improved education on professional complaints handling and DNA sampling, vastly improved forensic DNA testing and reduced DNA turnaround result times. The present tens or hundreds of thousands of backlogged cases again indicate severe maladministration and?incompetence. Forcing a female rape victim to wait months or years for the critical evidence in a DNA report is inhuman.There should be terminations and personal legal and financial penalties for the forensic laboratory managers and technologists who so underperform and thereby fail to serve their patients and so make them suffer through their negligence and incompetence.??

5.Let every community, village, town, township, and city in South Africa respond to the challenge of massive behaviour change by building a prominent “wall of shame”. On it, ?SA women will place the names and a photograph (properly authenticated and stamped by the police or other national authority) which “names and shames” all people ( 97% of whom are men) who are convicted of rape, sexual harassment or any other form of gender-based or sexual violence, abuse of women or children or convicted of any gender-based or sexual crimes against women or children. These can be supplemented by digital “walls of shame” naming convicted men on all social media?as a strong warning to other women and children?and as a strong disincentive to repeat offenders. Offenders who “repeat repeatedly” should be permanently removed from society with long custodial sentences. They have had their chances or redemption.

6.Let more men in positions of power, seniority or authority in the workplace. ?willingly step aside and stop consciously or unconsciously holding women back, blocking or obstructing women for promotions at work. In time, this systemic behaviour change will progressively allow more women to run our countries, companies, and organisations. They don’t need your permission; they need you men simply to get out of the way. They need you to stop casting your chauvinist long shadows over them; they need you to stop consuming?all the oxygen that they need to breathe in all the political, corporate, and institutional rooms.

7.Let’s give our female work colleagues the best and fairest?chances of employment equity and equality in workplaces that they have long deserved. We now know that all the five countries which had the most global impact in controlling the Covid pandemic were run by women. And in SA,?the sporting women now,?more often than not, outshine the men: Think Banyana Banyana winning the AFCON, something the men have never managed in history, and the recent SA Gold and Silver medals in the pool at the Commonwealth games.?

?8.After all, Guys, let’s be honest about this, and widely publicise the most unpleasant facts about male GBV to educate the public and create more awareness.

·?Men have caused and fought, almost all the wars in history

·?Men have made all the unwanted and abandoned babies

·?Men are responsible for almost all the violent crime

·?Men are responsible for most of the gun violence

·?Men are responsible for almost all the recorded gender-based violence, sexual harassment and assaults?

9.The most important roles on earth, (which ensure the very survival of the species), namely mothering, child-bearing, child-rearing and all forms of housework and childcare,?are not even measured in national GDP. This must change?immediately. See David Pilling, The Growth Delusion: The Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, published by Bloomsbury, 2018.

In David Pilling’s compelling book, he shows how the national measurement of GDP maps our past, our present and our future. Yet in no country does that vital, multi-skilled. full-time, unpaid job, namely the role of mother, child-bearer and child-minder, even get nationally measured or counted to contribute in any way to national GDP. Whereas laughably, even the “the sale of stolen goods for cash” contributes positively to GDP, but is theft really good for growth? A woman’s?laborious decades of unpaid housework and childcare, however, being unpaid, are excluded. This results, by one recent evaluation, in a $3.8 trillion underestimate of the size of the US economy https://www.ft.com/content/b6182440-f21e-11e7-bb7d-c3edfe974e9f

Indeed, these unpaid but vital social and human roles are disparagingly referred to as “women’s work”. All these?many, taken-for-granted traditional feminine roles such as homemaker, houseworker, carer, child-minder, driver, cook, bottle-washer, bed-maker, entertainer, storyteller, homework supervisor, baby-sitter, nurse, healer, confidant and above all, Mother, are unpaid. And and so,?officially at least, they count for nothing. This cannot be right, fair or equitable.

10. Educate Boys at primary, secondary and University levels about how to behave correctly towards modern women. This should?include?age-appropriate and examinable basic sex education and reproductive biology, contraception, dating and understanding what constitutes informed consent, prevention and treatment of STD, understanding the nuances of what constitutes date rape, awareness of all the #meeto case studies, awareness of all the national GBV and sexual crime statistics, understanding what constitutes rape, including marital rape, awareness of the mandatory sentences and punishments for rape and various sexual crimes. The objective here is?to change prevailing blokish and toxic male culture and mind-sets,and so improving positive?attitudes and knowledge about and towards girls and women.

We are, after all, in the “Age of Aquarius” and in the era of supposed human enlightenment.?So, Guys, lets act like we are properly enlightened and admit that we have had a very long and dominant innings for many millennia in all the world, national political, institutional and corporate leadership roles; We have now overstayed our welcome. Instead of hogging these leadership positions for ourselves and then more often than not, doing them badly (there are too many examples). Let’s rather leave it to those more talented women who can lead, to?lead.

And do we really have to remind ourselves about men's long and often autocratic and brutal adverse leadership track record (Tito, Hitler, Mussolini, Verwoerd, Pol Pot, Kim Yung Il, Putin, Trump, Boris Johnson, Bolsanaro (do I have to go on?). ?Conversely, the list of female despots is, reassuringly, very short. With this terrible track record, women simply cannot do any worse?than men: they can only do better.

Women also now need to step out now from the long and often biased or chauvinist shadows of their male counterparts. We need these more enlightened and capable women to step forward now and to raise their hands for more leadership roles. We want?a new generation of qualified and competent female leaders?to provide the smarter, more feminine, nurturing, inclusive and caring leadership that everyone agrees the world needs. Especially now.

?(This article by Dr Peter Cruse first appeared as a comment in LinkedIn see https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/let-men-now-stand-aside-all-more-capable-women-run-world-cruse?trk=portfolio_article-card_title )

Written by Dr Peter Cruse on the SA National Women’s Day, 9 8 2022