Gender Based Violence (GBV)

 Of late the topic of GBV has been a hot topic of debate; indeed it still is. Disturbing statistics have been revealed by Police showing how men, mostly males, kill or maim their female counterparts. However, I am curious about two stats that seem to be always missing from what is revealed. How many of the couples involved are married and how many are not? Was the relevant data deliberately ignored during collection, or was it considered “irrelevant”?  Do the revealed stats include same-sex couples? Is violence involving same-sex couples considered GBV, and if so how does it fit into the men versus women paradigm?

Look, as one prominent lawyer (let’s withhold his name for now) has always held, our society is generally violent, and GBV is just one manifestation of that violent social configuration. Many of us agree. You see, every wo(man) in society accepts that s/he lives in a just society. If not, s/he changes that society, violently if need be. There is expectation from every one of us therefore, that the power at the apex of our society is JUST. We believe that when we are mistreated, and we appeal to the immediate power above us, that power will adjudicate fairly and dispense justice. If justice is not dispensed, we expect to have the right to appeal to higher authority, until we reach the just APEX. 

If, for whatever social or political convenience, society connives to deny us justice, and we are too weak to change that social construct, WE BECOME VIOLENT. If a “partner”, (whatever that is) with whom we have a child, and with whom we therefore share some part of our life, decides to treat us badly, we expect that we can appeal to higher authority to right the wrong. But outside marriage, particularly cultural marriage, there is no one to appeal to. If we go to the police, they sometimes laugh, not because they are abdicating responsibility, but because the nature of the conflict is not within the purview of their responsibilities to settle.

All this brings me to the issue of GBV statistics.  It is my educated guess that the majority of GBV incidents happen between unmarried couples. You see, it is extremely difficult to legislate/regulate the whole spectrum of human relations that involve amorous affairs, and where marriage is non-existent.  Marriage is the bedrock of peaceful co-existence between genders. In the institution of marriage there are laws and norms that have to be observed, the breach of which, by one or the other marriage partner will not land the said partner in jail, but will be no less punitive: – ostracism by society.  Some social ostracism can be so severe that the ostracized married couple has no alternative but to emigrate! In almost every society marriage is given a special curiosity circumvention. In many jurisdictions a wife is protected by law from being forced to give evidence against her husband, and vice versa. In short, where marriage is viewed as sacred and treated as such by society and particularly by governments, GBV incidents will be at a minimum. Unfortunately, the moral and political bankruptcy of some governing entities render married couples an attractive target for destabilization. The thinking of such governing entities is that if out of one couple you get two “members” who hate each other passionately, you have thus increased your support base even if that was achieved through “splitting of the atom” so to speak! Bad governance is responsible for the majority of GBV cases involving married couples. I recall a declaration on TV by one former minister under the former ruling party that she tells her spouse that either he supports her party or he ships out! This is classic bad governance. Why let party political support determine your relationship as a married couple? Ordinarily one expects a married couple to support the same political party, but it shouldn’t be to the detriment of the marriage itself.

Gender-based violence among unmarried couples has a simple remedy in my culture. Unmarried couples should not live together. Children born out of wedlock belong to their mother and her family ONLY. The biological father has responsibility for the material needs of such children, but he has no parental rights, not even the right to name such children, let alone bestow his surname on them. Most importantly, in my culture there is no such thing as a girlfriend or boyfriend. A man who impregnates a woman he is not married to is considered to have committed a crime. If the woman is already married to another man, then the “criminal and his female accomplice” suffer the humiliation of exposure and fining of the man by the aggrieved husband. No violence is called for. Commission of such a “crime” cannot, under any circumstances whatsoever entitle the man to again sleep with the woman, unless and until they subsequently marry each other.  To support this moral standing, no financial impediments are placed in the way of a couple to consummation of its marriage. I have written at length about the Kalanga practice of “nkumbo”, under which a poor couple is allowed to simply elope, but be accorded a full married status.

Every culture has its way of dealing with amorous transgressions and their consequences without resorting to GBV, the problem comes when an alien culture is imposed wholesale, on a “subject” people; especially if those who impose the alien culture are themselves morally corrupt.