MEN ABUSE – A SILENT KILLER

Many men suffer in silence from abuse by their spouses for fear of being ridiculed by their peers and police officers who taunt them
Domestic violence has been a crisis in the country for ages and in most cases the abuse is perpetrated by men who use their physical strength to unleash a reign of terror against their women and children.

As a matter of fact, the phenomenon has reached such apocalyptic proportions that it has become intrinsic with the South African way of life.

Although most, if not all, domestic violence cases that are reported and documented are invariably committed by men, it has emerged that the reverse does exist, with more and more men enduring horrifying abuse at the hands of their women.

But sadly, due to gender stereotypes and cultural socialisation, men who are at the receiving end of abuse suffer silently for fear of either not being taken seriously or being ridiculed.

One such man is 30-year old Njabulo Khumalo (not his real name) of Bloemspruit in Bloemfontein. He got involved with a beautiful loving woman who later turned into a monster.

“I thought it was love, the woman was keeping tabs on my whereabouts and I thought she was only concerned, but it just sucked. On many incidents she attacked me and told me that I was not man enough for her.”

One day, on his lover’s birthday, Khumalo, took her out to some fancy restaurant. All hell broke loose when a female friend of his – who was well known to the lover – came over to greet the couple. The instinctive thing to do was convincing himself that she did not recognize her on that particular night. He was only making excuses for her and, subconsciously, he knew it.

“She got so vicious, I was scared for my life that day; she grabbed a table knife, started poking me with it, accusing me of letting ‘my other girlfriend’ undermine her. There was no stopping her, everyone in the restaurant was staring and listening to her shouting and swearing at me,” recalled Khumalo.

After that incident the two parted ways and Khumalo got a court interdict against this ex-girlfriend who now constantly calls him to say she will never give up on him. He wants nothing to do with this woman because he is afraid she will kill him one day.

Like most males, Khumalo laments that men have become an endangered species, thanks to ‘the system.’

“I think that the rights that have been given to women by the government are failing us as men. My ex would slap me and tell me she had a right to smack me, but she boldly told me she would get me arrested if I dared raise a hand to her,” concluded an evidently dejected and pensive Khumalo.

The Weekly spoke with the Family and Marriage Association of South Africa (FAMSA) in Bloemfontein to get more insight into the insidious scourge of abuse of men.

According to the director of FAMSA, Karen Botha, not many men visit the centre because men are generally reluctant to seek help because of the fear of being perceived as “weak sissies” who are ‘bleksemmed’ by woman.

“While we were growing up, men were looked up to as protectors of their families, so when they are being abused by women it is hard for them to seek help. As counselors we know that a lot of men are abused in their households, but they do not want to go through the ‘humiliation’ of seeking help,” noted Botha.

Botha said she has been a counselor for more than 30 years and has seen a lot of men being emotionally and verbally abused by their wives and girlfriends.

“I remember an incident of a man who once came to us for help because his wife was beating him up. They both came for a few counseling sessions but the woman was very violent towards her husband.”

“On one occasion as we were in the middle of a session, the woman just slapped her husband in my office. After the session she accused me of having an affair with her husband, just because the man usually called me when things were bad in the house.”

“We have another problem of a woman who wants to sponge off her husband who pays maintenance money which she squanders irresponsibly.”

Counsellor Maria Mtonxa says men are sometimes provoked by their partners to act up. She said women usually hurt their men’s self-esteem by telling them they are not fit to be called men if they don’t bring any money home. No man wants to be called that.

“When we talk to such couples, the woman is usually not aware that she is killing the man on the inside by saying such words to him. So we help them communicate better without uttering hurtful words,” said Mtonxa.

She said most women think they can stay at home and spend their man’s money without doing anything to help them in return.

“We are now living in modern days and women should learn to meet their men half way because financial disputes usually end in a break up.

Mtonxa added that, when the couple are working, most women just spend their money on themselves and do not want to reveal how much they earn or what they spend their salary on; yet they still want the husbands and boyfriends to pay for all expenses in the household. That is financial abuse, according to Mtonxa.

She said they receive cases of stay-at-home women who insist that their husbands bring their salaries to them, only for the women to use the whole salary to buy liquor instead of food. As a result, they assault their men if they decide to stop financing their addictions.

“There was another client who was 60 years old and had withstood abuse throughout his life. He was first abused by his father as a child and when he grew up he was abused by his stepmother. Then when he got married his wife was also abusing him; so the only life that he ever knew was that of abuse.”

“Men abuse is a silent killer; most of our male clients usually complain about law enforcement agents who ridicule them when they report abusive women at police stations.”

“The clients say the policemen refuse to take their statements and they call them sissies; but when the very same abusive women cry violence, the cops act swiftly and tell the men they will arrest them and sleep with their wives while they rot in jail.

The SAPS spokeswoman, Colonel Thandi Mbambo said men are entitled to lay charges of domestic violence at any police station. She said men who are not granted the chance to lay charges should report such cops to their station commanders and not just go back home and say they did not get assistance.