— David de Bruyn
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In the run-up to the G20 conference, various lobbyists in South Africa were calling on President Cyril Ramaphosa to declare Gender-Based Violence a “national disaster”. Eventually, this was conceded, and the Department of Social Development posted the announcement on its website
What is meant by this declaration? What difference will it make? And what does it say about the beliefs of a large number of South Africans?
First, the declaration of a national disaster is usually reserved for catastrophes or calamities, brought about by natural or man-made causes, or by accident or negligence. They result in substantial loss of life or human suffering, much destruction of, property or degradation of the environment. Natural disasters may include an earthquake, flood, landslide, cyclone, tsunami, urban flood, heatwave, famine etc. Man-made disasters may be of a nuclear, biological and chemical nature. Usually, national disasters are of such a magnitude as to be beyond the coping capacity of the community of the affected area.
By these definitions, the ongoing scourge of gender-based violence may be a devastating reality, but it does not constitute a national disaster. Saying that the levels of violence from men to women are deplorable is true; one does not make it any more solvable by putting it into the category of calamitous events. This is simply trying to gain attention to an issue by hijacking very specific terms related to calamities to gain political points. One could just as easily declare the amount of lying in South Africa to be a “national disaster”, or the amount of adultery to be a ‘national disaster”. Categorising moral sin as a national disaster really does not help the victims of Gender-Based Violence. It is just gaining publicity for the issue by the manipulation of words.
That’s because this very action reveals a faulty idea of human government. The evils of rape, child abuse and domestic violence are not problems that will be solved primarily through government programs. Yes, assault and abuse are crimes to be prosecuted by the police, but they can do so only after the violence has been committed. Prevention of this kind of violence is not achieved by government proclamations, programs and pronouncements.
Declaring GBV a national disaster also has the negative effect of conceding more rights and powers to the government. Citizens should be concerned with limiting the powers of government, not calling on it to have enhanced powers. And when a society believes a problem is the government’s to solve, individuals abdicate their own responsibility and wait for a solution to be sent down from Pretoria.
Prevention of violence against women and children is not going to be achieved by government. It will be achieved through stable families. Fundamentally, these stable families are achieved through the presence of responsible, godly fathers. Fathers are the protectors of and providers for women and children. When men grow up without fathers, they often turn to destructive behaviours: gangs, alcoholism, drugs, and immorality. This is at the heart of Gender-based violence: men growing up in fatherless homes.
Why are no politicians mentioning the epidemic of fatherlessness in South Africa? Why is no one declaring the fact that 70% of children in South Africa grow up without their biological father in the home a national disaster? The answer is that to admit that fatherlessness is the problem is to admit that men are supposed to lead in the home. It is to concede that the Bible is correct in saying that men are to be the loving protectors and providers in the home and the church. To admit this is to refute the Woke Social Justice Agenda, which desires to portray men as oppressors, and to portray the genders as independent and autonomous, untethered from marriage and family.
Therefore, politicians whose careers depend on supporting woke activism will back down every time an activist accuses them of not fully supporting women’s rights. If next year they declare that GBV is a pandemic requiring a state of emergency, they may well concede.
The solution to Gender-Based Violence against true victims, women and defenceless children, is found in the Gospel. When the good news of Jesus Christ begins to transform people, it transforms men from predators into protectors, from absconders to able-bodied working fathers and husbands. When children grow up with two godly parents in a stable, biblical home, in the future, both men and women will be ready for healthy, God-glorifying marriages and families of their own.