South African women are outperforming men in getting more, so they are very much on top of their game.
However, the sad reality is that gender-based violence and patriarchy is so prevalent in South Africa, women are still under this cloud.
But women’s success is often resented by some men, leading to sexual abuse that has further spread HIV/Aids in our country.
It reminds me of one HIV/ Aids campaign that fell flat on its face that probably had an experience of a strange corresponding face among octogenarian ladies.
Once upon a time the then deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa in the fight against HIV/Aids would advertise in Parliament a new invention that came in different flavours. It was the Max condom that had just launched. “Max for maximum pleasure, maximum protection and lack of noise,” the then deputy president said.
The Department of Health before then had also witnessed a flight of condoms from the shelves, and the pundits believed that their campaign for people to use condoms had reached home.
But imagine the surprise when they followed up, they discovered it was the elderly, especially of Soweto, who had been in the market for condoms. Whoever led their research findings or experimental design up that cranny or it was the nostalgic wit of the octogenarians in Soweto, it is yet to be discovered about who led the grannies to this magical discovery that had a field day in the use of condoms.
The HIV/Aaids activists were also eager to find what the new season for the elderly heralded, and what triggered it. The elderly believed in the myth that the lubricant in an unused condom was good for their arthritis and were happily using the condoms for their creaky joints!
Another stubborn legend is one about young girls attracting pregnancy in exchange for a child support grant. So, the saying around village wells that the child support grant has a self-fulfilling wish for among young girls. This is to have a child and propel the grant system in your favour. This would have been a harrowing attitude that would need the attention of everyone to put this attitude to a sudden stop. Professor Eric Udo dismissed this urban legend.
Data from Statistics South Africa on fertility trends defined as the number of children a woman would have in their reproductive life reflects no truth in this lazy thinking.
Another urban legend that refuses to die is one that men date younger women. While in the past this was not true statistically, this legend has transformed itself into truth.
The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in its tracking studies on the HIV/Aids prevalence made the observation around 2009 of the “sugar daddy” syndrome.
Professor Simbayi Zuma in the 2022 South Africa National HIV Prevalence, Incidence, Behaviour and Communication Survey study warned about the outstanding agenda on the national calendar that of vulnerability of young women who engaged in transactional sex with the pot-bellied elderly.
However, it looks like women are also taking a different route to their independence. Census data from 1996 to 2022 suggests that women have broken the glass ceiling in terms of acquisition of degree education.
In the 1996 Census women got less degrees than men. By 2001 women aged 40 years got more than men, while those 41 years and above got less. According to Census 2011 women 55 years and younger have lifted their education game to once more trump men. By the 2022 Census the age had shifted to 65 years and lower where women are totally in the forefront of getting degrees compared to men. What women achieved in 30 years is nothing short of a miracle.
The sad reality, however, is that in the context of patriarchal dominance in South Africa women getting ahead of men leads to gender-based violence. Cleansing ourselves of our brokenness as society is a necessary condition to normalise us as society.
A good social campaign is that of the “bring a girl child to school campaign”, but such victory is pyrrhic as it does not liberate women from gender-based violence.
Instead it triggers a raw nerve in the male testosterone for their god-given right to dominate and they will fight.
GBV is a disease of brokenness and we have to fix our society and rid ourselves of it. Our society has to heal itself and do better.
Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of the Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.
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