A quest to heal the spiritual wound of sexual violence.

The initial seed that inspired my activism as an advocate against gender-based violence was planted when I practiced as an emergency care nurse at George Mkhari (former Ga-Rankuwa) Hospital where I witnessed a woman wheeled in with an axe stuck in her knee-bone. I remember feeling helpless. My training as a health care practitioner did not equip me with skills that goes beyond treatment of physical injuries.

A few years later, I worked as a Research officer at Wits Medical School. During that time, I undertook research on woman battering as a public health concern. In the study, I reviewed 389 medical records of women who presented with a history of assault at Alexandra Clinic during October and November of 1991. 18% of the women sustained injuries that required hospitalisation. These injuries included fractures (skull, jaw, forearm, sternum, ribs, and nose), deep scalp lacerations, and penetrating chest injuries. The weapons used ranged from fists, knives, hammers, axes, bottles, and screwdrivers. Some of the women who were pregnant during the assault were kicked on their abdomens.

A year after undertaking the research, I resigned from Wits and went to establish Agisanang Domestic Abuse Prevention and Training (ADAPT). Initially, ADAPT focused on counseling and support for women. Later, in 1997, we introduced the involvement of men as part of the solution to violence against women. During the same year, we organised the first men’s march rape against rape from Alexandra Police Station to Alexandra Stadium. The march inspired the formation of the South African Men’s Forum.

I worked as Executive Director of ADAPT until 2000. By the time I left, I was completely burnt-out. I did not have an ounce of energy and a heart to listen to another story of abuse. To focus on my recovery, I started to write. One of the books I wrote during that time was The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court: Reflections on the Rape Trial of Jacob Zuma. I still do not know where I got the courage to write that book. A few days before its release, I was gripped in fear.

I remember the launch at Constitutional Hill and a guy who followed me around. Just before my family and I walked back to the car, he came close and asked: O itshepile eng? As my guides would have it, I was not subjected to any physical harm. Instead, I was subjected to economic and social isolation. My house was auctioned, car repossessed; I spent a decade moving from one place to another, most times it was because of failure to pay rent. I emerged out of my spiritual hospital with an unhardened heart. The prospect of having to operate from a place of love was scary for some time.

It is now 2021, thirty years from the time that I conducted the study at Alexandra Clinic. I look back and ask myself a question: What has changed?

Unfortunately, nothing much has changed. According to SAPS report from 2015-2020, a total of 13 815 women over the age of 18 have been killed. This translates to seven women a day. This figure is an underestimate because it excludes those murders that did not make it to the police station. This prevalence of violence against women continues to spike, more so during this time of Covid-19. In 2020, the GBV Command Centre reported triple number of calls during the first lockdown.

The criminal justice system remains a critical point of call for women who are subjected to all forms of gender-based violence. However, many of the cases drop out long before court date. Those who make it to court face an uphill battle of being “judged” by a patriarchal system which peddles stereotypical myths such as “she asked for it.” In many instances, women who insist on taking reports of sexual violence to the hilt end up being treated like the accused. Clearly, gender-based violence does not only harm the physical body. It also corrodes the heart and soul of women. The soul wound of violence remains long after the perpetrator has been sentenced.

Does this mean that the soul of the perpetrator is not corroded?

We often think of perpetrators as beasts who must be locked up for life. Yet, the reality is men who violate women include those we live with and love: men we are intimate with, men we have given birth to, and men that we look up to. These men that we love may not have forced themselves on us but there is a chance that they may have had sex with another woman without consent. After all, not all rapes are physically violent.

In an interview that we had with an elder man who once raped a 14-year-old, I asked him a question: Do you think that rape will ever come to an end? His answer was a resounding No. Men have no respect for women, he said, and they are also driven by physical lust. In his response, he further mentioned that ntho ya “rape” ga e fole – meaning, a man who violates a woman sexually carries the spiritual wound and curse with him.

If it is true that men who rape carry the wound of having violated a woman, and if one considers the fact that South Africa is reported to be one country with a high prevalence of rape in the world, the question is: how many men walk wounded and what does this wound translate into regarding their relationships with women?

An attempt to answer this question is compounded by the fact violence against women in South Africa is embedded in a history where oppressors used violence as an acceptable means of domination. In turn, the oppressed used violence to counter attacks against them. The result of this is chronic moral injuries which the western criminal justice is not equipped to deal with. Moral injury does not only damage character and personality; it also results in harmful coping mechanisms such as addictions, violent crimes, self-harm which includes suicide.

South Africa’s suicide rate of more than 13.4 per 100 000 is estimated to be four times the global rate of 3.6 per 100 000 According to the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG), 23 people die of suicide every day. For every one of them, there are at least 20 who made attempts and failed. In other words, when suicide becomes successful, it is often preceded by several failed attempts. Men are four times more likely to die of suicide than women. This is reported to be increasing during lockdown. Like the GBV Command Centre that reports an increase in gender-based violence, SADAG and other mental health institutions report an increase in men who die from suicide.

Now the question is: What do we do? Women are killed by men, and men kill themselves. This is not only limited to adult men. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in teenagers in the 15-19 age group. The majority of these are boys. The youngest case of suicide reported was a little boy who killed himself at school.

It is within this context that Afrika Ikalafe proposes Marumo Fatshe as an intervention that is aimed at healing the collective soul and moral wound. Marumo Fatshe does not replace the Criminal Justice System. Instead, it attempts to prevent the violence from occurring. Where it fails to prevent the violence, it focuses on healing the aftermath of sexual violence. In the last chapter of The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court: Reflections on the Rape Trial of Jacob Zuma which I wrote in 2007 I asked the question: After the verdict, what next?

Marumo Fatshe is a continuation of my journey as a woman who was raped as a child and later founded organisations for abused women. In my work with women, I was moved to include men as part of the solution. The inspiration comes from having been raised by a loving and gentle man who provided for me economically and emotionally. In some ways, this project is meant to honour him and his love, as well as heal his wounds of growing up in a society that refused to give him permission to feel because he is a man. By healing him, I hope I can transfer the healing to men who came before him, and those who came through me.

In 2013 when I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, I used the song, The Impossible Dream, as my spiritual walking stick.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
And to run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
And to love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star.

Is the dream of imagining a country with no violence against women and girls impossible?

Is it possible for us to reweave the soul of this nation so that we can re-member what it is like to be human again?

We come from a lineage of broken people. How then, can we break the cycle of multigenerational trauma?