I wish men would talk about women

I was once the leader of the Men’s Fellowship of the Christian Action Fellowship (CAF), a Christian organization at Wits, during my student days there. Our vision during our term of office, adopted from the team that had led a year before us, was simply “To Raise and Develop Men of Integrity”. To this day, I can still feel the profundity of this statement and vision.

Many of us were barely out of our teens or had just hit the 20's, but it’s astounding that at such a young age (I myself was 20 years old), we had managed to correctly diagnose what our society needed: South Africa was in dire need of men of integrity to steer this nation forward. We certainly had our finger on the pulse.

For a year, the fraternity tackled all sorts of issues which we felt were affecting us, men, and posing a challenge to our endeavour on becoming men of character. We tackled issues such as fatherlessness and how this affected us later in life, as grown-up men.  “Integrity in the corporate world” was one of the issues we also addressed. Twice, we organized what was simply dubbed “brothers’ night” and the depth of the topics discussed there still makes me marvel.

For Mother’s Day that year, we did something special for the ladies in our organization. Most of them, being young students, were obviously not mothers themselves, but we told them we were “celebrating the mother in them”. They were charmed.

Then one day, I visited a friend of mine at his room in the residence. He was distraught; sometime before I arrived he had clearly been crying. He still had tears in his eyes. He had read an article in the newspaper which told of how a young woman in Tembisa had been gang raped by a throng of men. As if the gang rape in itself was not enough, one of her attackers wrapped his penis with a plastic bag as some form of “condom”, and proceeded to rape her. My body shivered. Quintin told me of how he had cried bitterly when he read that story. With tears in his eyes, he asked me, “Zakes (as I was then called), what are we going to do about this?”

As leader of the Men’s Fellowship, I had proposed to the CAF council earlier that year at a leadership retreat that the Men’s Fellowship be given the approval to host an event in honour of women on the 9^th August 2004. I was quizzed by the council as to what this event was about etc. One member of the council, a man, voiced that he wasn’t prepared to vote that the council simply allocated funds to an event without knowing how the money would be spent. Another council member, a lady, retorted, rather comically, that the chap challenging my proposal must not spoil the ladies’ surprise, much to the cheers of the rest of the ladies. Our proposal was approved.

So when Quintin asked me what we were planning on doing for women’s day, I understood that indeed that question was also a challenge that our focus shouldn’t just be about celebrating women and making them feel good, as we had done on Mothers’ Day. Much more than just a celebration of women needed to be done.

Who were these men that were raping women, in such despicable ways? Were they living among us? Were we those men? Would we, the men in our circles, turn out to be like the men in Tembisa that raped that powerless woman?

We started debating this issue and after a few hours, we knew what needed to be done. I was going to speak to the MF committee and propose the angle we would be using in the event celebrating women. This event was going to be about US just as it was about women. We were going to challenge and confront ourselves as men, and ask ourselves some very painful and uncomfortable questions.

Women would never enjoy the benefits of freedom in South Africa, if men still felt that they had rights and authority over women’s bodies. Women in South Africa constantly lived under the fear of being raped and violated.

We canvassed the men in the fraternity and held discussions were we discussed, quite intensely, about what women meant to us, and what informed our behaviour towards them. One of the key questions which I remember Quintin asking was, “how do you know, as a man, that you will never rape?”. That’s a question I still ask even today, and will continue to do so, until my grave. The prominence of that question in my mind keeps me on the toes, so to speak. It’s a constant reminder and check of the man I am becoming.

The 9^th August 2004 arrived. We had really planned a special event, and it was organzied right down to the tee. The setting of Umthombo Building 10, the lecture theatre where this event was hosted, is that it has three blocks of seats. We arranged that the gentlemen would sit on the side blocks, and the ladies would be “sandwiched” in the middle block. Our male ushers made sure that as people arrived, the men would be kindly separated from their female companions, at least for the duration of the event. The lecture theatre was packed.

The arrangement of the programme itself was excellent. Mduduzi, a young male student from Kwa-Zulu Natal opened the event with a resounding poem, paying homage to our guests of honour, the women. We invited a female doctor to speak on women and HIV/AIDS. Our second speaker was a rape survivor, who had been gang raped on that very campus one evening when she was walking back to her res. Another lady gave a motivational talk giving women encouragement to “fly like eagles”. This was followed by a panel discussion on all three of these talks. Quintin directed the programme.

The event culminated with the men, standing up from their seats, and reading in unison, a one-paragraph speech, pledging to the women in the hall that they would love and protect them. At the end of the pledge, each man walked to at least two women and gave them a copy of that pledge. It was so moving and many in that room were impacted. Hugs were exchanged, as men made a commitment that they wanted to change the landscape of the country, to one where women were respected and honoured.  

Before we made the pledge, I had to give a speech to round up everything. As this year’s Women’s Day was approaching, I have been thinking long and hard about that Monday afternoon in 2004, when we made that pledge. How far have we come as a country? Has the condition of women changed in the last decade?

More and more women continue to be raped in our communities, and very little seems to be changing, at least in my eyes. And why, oh why, are we no longer having the kind of conversations we had 10 years ago? I know talking might not solve our social problems entirely, but many years ago on the N1-South in Midrand, there used to be a huge MTN billboard which simply said “When talking stops, war begins”. I wish we could go back to talking about women. We need to.

I thought long and hard about the speech I gave for that event on Women’s Day in 2004. Besides the over-personalization on some parts of the speech which in hindsight embarrasses me a little, I’m still astounded that some of the things raised therein are still relevant 10 years later. During my internal struggle as to whether I should publish that speech, earlier today I saw a status of a lady friend of mine on Facebook declaring that she wished that men would use this day to “reflect on the way they treat women”. And I agreed.  After reading that status, I felt justified in my desire to publish the speech.

Here, I publish the full speech. Save for one factual correction to the speech, I have cited it verbatim, to protect its authenticity, grammatical errors and all.

Happy Women’s Day.

The Importance of Women

9 August 2004

Umthombo Building 10,

Wits University

In his first State of the Nation Address, May 1994, the then President Nelson Mandela said, "It is vitally important that all structures of government, including the President himself, should understand this fully: that freedom cannot be achieved unless women have been emancipated from all forms of oppression. All of us must take this on board, that the objectives of the Reconstruction and Development will not have been realised unless we see in visible and practical terms that the condition of women in our country has radically changed for the better and that they have been empowered to intervene in all spheres of life as equals with any other member of society."

It has been a little over a decade since Madiba made this statement, and as much as things have changed for the better, many things remain the same- more so in the church and the family structure where women are still being viewed as being inferior to men. The fact that a woman is killed every six hours in South Africa is evident to this statement. What is even more frustrating is the fact that the perpetrators committing this injustice are the women's intimate partners. The irony is that these are the men who are supposed to love and respect these women. The critical question which then emanates from this is in whose arms are the women suppose to feel loved and protected when their men are the ones who inflict such horrendous harm on them.

Many women are making an incredible mark in business and perhaps in government. That is wonderful. That is, however, only one side of the coin.  A survey, published by the Institute for Security Studies, found that half the women who experienced economic, emotional and physical abuse said the perpetrator was a spouse or partner. The study found that 80 percent of the 1,000 survivors of abuse interviewed had experienced emotional abuse, 76 percent physical abuse, 63 percent sexual and 62 percent economic abuse. To mark International Women's Day in 2003 Mandisa Kalako-Williams, president of the South African Red Cross Society, said "..As long as gender stereotyping and discrimination limited the development of girls and women, preventing them from fully participating in society, they would remain vulnerable."

It is a fact that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped, than learning how to read. One in four girls faces the prospect of being raped before the age of 16 according to the child support group, Childline. "Baby Tshepang" was just 9 months old when she was brutally raped in the Northern Cape town of Louisvale in the early hours of 27 October 2001.

I dare say that this is only a tip of the iceberg. It is highly probable that thousands have been raped and have been subdued to any kind of abuse and have not reported it in due to the intimidations of their abusers. Millions of females across our country live in fear-whether they are abused or not. The South African woman lives in a world of uncertainty. She is not sure whether she'll make it home from work without her taxi driver taking a detour to a deserted place to rape her. She is not sure whether she'll wake up in the morning without her husband having raped her as a punishment for coming home late from her strenuous job. She is even frustrated more by this because her own family says and does nothing by this, because after all, he is her husband. The only comforting words she'll receive are that- 'mosadi o tshwara thipa ka bogaleng.' She is not sure whether she'll wake up tomorrow to see her little daughters grow because her husband has threatened to kill her because she can't give him a son-as if she was God!!

The plight that the South African women find themselves in is appalling and it is terribly unfortunate that the church is silent about this. The church pretends that it is a problem out there in the community and not in the church which just shows how isolated the church is from the community- so much for being the light of the world. We cannot claim the blood of Jesus to have set us free and yet our women remain imprisoned. We have been quiet for far too long and this has come to an end!!

We as the Men's Fellowship of the Christian Action Fellowship (CAF) have realised that if the issue of women importance is to be reclaimed, it has to be through men. If we want to change this unfortunate situation, we first have to change our perceptions, because perception is a powerful thing. Perceptions "...govern the way we see, and the way we see governs the way we behave.” by Stephen R. Covey. If we change our perceptions of women today, tomorrow definitely will be a brighter day.

When we start to view women as our equals our behaviour towards them will definitely change for the better. I have been waiting for a day when I would truly be proud to be a man.

Ladies and gentlemen, fortunately that day has come.  We have gathered here today to witness and be part of an extraordinary declaration, which I believe, is the first of its kind. The men have convened to this place with an agenda, one that has the motive to change the condition of women dramatically. We take full responsibility of what women have been subjected to over the years. We take responsibility of the injustices that women have received fro men. We own up to the precarious condition the women find themselves in. We do not end there! We are turning the tide. We are making a commitment to ourselves, to the women and to God that we shall perceive and treat them, as God would want us to. We are saying that we shall give them the utmost respect that they deserve. When we have even moved beyond the boundaries of Christian values and morals, we shall understand that when a woman says no she means no and not yes, whether she is a wife, or otherwise!!

I as the leader of the Men's Fellowship am tremendously proud on this 9th day of August 2004 as we celebrate 10 Years of Freedom, that my men are taking an affirmative stand. I am proud to be their leader because they are taking a stand that is politically correct and at the same time, a stand that I believe to be Godly correct. They are honouring our treasure and God's precious gift to us- a woman. They are also making a commitment to protect the women and forever be there for them. Gentlemen, I love you and I am proud of what you are doing and are about to do today. I believe God honours this day too!!

As I conclude: Last night, before I could stand here today and make a commitment to these beautiful and lovely ladies, I made a commitment to the 5 special ladies in my life, and all of you ladies also are. I called my 4 sisters, that is, my two elder sisters, my twin-sister and my sister in-law. I told them I love them and I made the special commitment that I am about to make to you to them. I also called my stepmother, who is my mother for a special reason. My biological mother died 17 years ago when I was only three. She was killed by the cruel disease of breast cancer, which is one of the diseases killing many women even today. God was gracious enough to bless us with a second mother three years later. It is through this woman that I got to learn about the importance and relevance of a woman in one's life.

I am what I am because of what she has imparted in me. At the age of 35, in 1990, she took a tremendously bold step of becoming a second mother to 5 children. 3 of them, that is my 2 elder sisters and brother, were teenagers and 2 of them, my twin-sister and I, were only 6. She not only faced the tremendous challenge of being a second mother to us, but also to fight the traditional belief that stepmothers are evil. In spite of all the negativity and hostility that greeted her in a foreign culture of Venda and with her being a Motswana, she stood the test of time. My parents will be celebrating their 15-year Anniversary next year and I can tell you with all confidence, boldness and honesty that I couldn't have asked for a better stepmother. I am saying this to give a picture of how much value I place in women. I am also saying this as a challenge to the guys gathered here that after they have made this commitment to the ladies here, they must also commit themselves to the closest ladies they have at home, because the principle of "charity begins at home" is very much true.

Finally to the all ladies, I, Livhuwani Matsila, the leader of the Men's Fellowship, would like to say to you on this great day, that your significance in my life as a man is invaluable. I stand here before you, before the men and before God and I have this to say to you: You are important and significant in my life. I pray to God that you grow and continue to be the women God has destined you to be-'Women of Noble Character'. I LOVE YOU AND GOD BLESS YOU!!