RIGHTS-SOUTH AFRICA: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Nov 25 2005 (IPS) - Jane Zweli* has tried to escape her abusive marriage – tried no less than three times, in fact. But, with little education and few skills, she fears that a future away from her husband might be even bleaker than one with him.

“This is the third time I’ve run away from my husband. I have three children – I don’t want them to suffer,” she told IPS from a women’s shelter in the South African capital, Pretoria.

Zweli’s dilemma reflects the plight of hundreds of thousands of women in South Africa who depend on husbands for their livelihood – and who are in the spotlight, Friday: the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

“It’s difficult when you’re in an abusive relationship with a medical doctor or an engineer…You’ll think twice about leaving the good car, the good house and the good life,” Dimakatso Wanyana, a shelter manager, said in an interview with IPS.

Added Zweli, “My parents and relatives will feel uneasy to welcome me and my three children. They will worry about space and money to feed the extra members of the new family.”

If she had some money, Zweli said, she would set up a business selling second-hand clothes or vegetables in the neighbourhood she fled from.

According to People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA), a non-governmental organisation based in Johannesburg, one in four women in South Africa is in an abusive relationship – while one woman is killed every six days by a male partner. The National Trauma Research Programme at the Medical Research Council, a government agency, attributes two thirds of domestic violence cases to alcohol use.

“Abuse against women is not stabilising. Only, women are now aware of their rights. They are able to come out and talk openly about their problems,” Mothipi Mohamane of the Johannesburg-based South African Women’s Shelter Movement told IPS.

Wanyana runs two shelters in the northern province of Gauteng, where Pretoria and Johannesburg are situated. The shelters are supported by POWA; about 150 women and children pass through each annually.

To avoid having women come under renewed attack by abusive partners, the locations of shelters are kept secret. Even telephone numbers are not given out; journalists who seek interviews with the women must submit their details, and then wait for shelter management to phone them back, to conduct the interviews.

Women are pushed into taking refuge at shelters by a variety of factors, ranging from spousal abuse to being stripped of their property once widowed, by relatives of deceased husbands.

On occasion, it is husbands themselves who are a source of economic difficulty: “Some (women) run away because their husbands want to take away their earnings,” said Wanyana.

HIV/AIDS also plays a role in determining who seeks assistance.

“Some (women) come to the shelter because they have disclosed their HIV status and their husbands don’t want to hear anything about it,” Wanyana noted. “Domestic abuse goes with HIV. Often a man will refuse to wear a condom, and rape his partner to show that he’s a man.”

Shelters provide an essential service for women who need to escape these situations. But they are at best a temporary solution to the problems faced by abused women, who must at some point find the courage to move on.

Women are supposed to leave Wanyana’s shelters after six months, although this rule is bent from time to time. Some shelter residents stay longer because of judicial delays in resolving their cases; others lack the money to support themselves, or feel that relatives would find their presence burdensome.

In instances where women return to abusive households, they may well be lulled into a false sense of security.

“Often after the ‘honeymoon phase’ – which could be a period of two or three weeks – he hits her again,” said Wanyana. “So she decides that the relationship doesn’t work. She wants out.”

Children caught in these situations may turn against their fathers, she warned.

“Some of the children don’t want to see their father. They also don’t want to see other men at times, (as) they see in men their father. The long-term psychological effect is terrible.”

To combat abuse, Wanyana said, wide-ranging changes need to be made.

“We need to change society’s mindset. We should make gender part of the school curriculum…The priests should also preach against domestic violence in the church,” she noted.

* Certain names have been changed to protect the privacy of those concerned.