THE CYCLE OF ABUSE MANIFESTING

I grew up in a community where everything that could happen, literally happened. At primary school, I witnessed a man butcher his wife to death. A few days later he was back in the community living his normal life, because he was considered ‘insane’ by law, so he could not be convicted for that murder.

Fast forward to today, his son has also been charged with murder. He is one of the two young men from Mnyamatsini who confessed to murder just last week. My point? Isn’t it amazing how this is showing in real time how abuse or gender based violence is a cycle?

Community

I love my community because I grew up there, but I’ve grown to fear being at ‘ekasi’ because of all the gross crime that’s committed against community members. Each and every day there is a story. It’s the very same community that is famous for ‘emaBenjamin’, a notorious group of young men who have terrorized the whole community for the past10 years.
The sad thing about this is that even the police are tired of dealing with these boys. They will pick up someone for stabbing someone else, and two weeks or two months down the line that perpetrator is back in the same community. What does that tell the young generation? That crime has no repercussions, that you can literally get away with anything.

And that’s exactly what’s wrong with our society, that’s what’s wrong with our justice system! I remember reading about the man from Mafutseni who had been harassing a young lady to the point that she had dropped out of school in fear for her life, and even after multiple reports of how this man had raped and sexually assaulted her, he still roamed the streets freely while she lived in fear.

Help

Did he not eventually kill her? I’ve been seeing Royal Eswatini Police Facebook post asking the nation to help apprehend him, now that he’s killed her, why was he let go in the first place? I don’t understand how something that needs the least common sense could be so difficult to understand d for our law enforcers. I am literally writing this and shaking, thinking how this could have easily be me, or you, because at the rate with which crime is ignored, anyone can fall victim. Anyway, I digress. My point today was to discuss the cycle of abuse and how as a society, we can break that cycle. For instance, the man who was murdered by these two young men in Mnyamatsini had been in hiding at the co. munity because he had also committed murder back home in Lavumisa.

Why he was allowed to stay with this family after what he did is beyond me. And in turn, had the father who murdered his wife been punished for his crime, his son would most probably had turned out different. Web young people grow up watching crime and observing how easy it is to get away with it, they will no doubt do the same. I have too many examples of this, and I will need to write a whole book, some personal and some observed accounts, but I suppose the point has been made. So how do we deal with this as a community?

Talk

The first step is to break the silence. Talk about these issues at community level and find ways to prevent crime. The other way that has worked for my community especially was having a head teacher in the only primary school we have, who cared about the future of these children. He helped them stay at school, and when Mr Dube was still the head teacher at Ezulwini Valley Primary School, crime was never an issue. So neglecting these kids while they are young has contributed greatly to the downfall, leading to them choosing a life of crime. But I believe the biggest player in this whole issue is the law.

When a convict is given the freedom to roam the streets, they will do nothing but cause more problems. Rehabilitation and correction are important, but what kind of rehabilitation can happen. Within two weeks or two months? When these people are released back into the community, what expectations does the law have of them if not to commit more crime?So we need the police to really work with us and protect us, as per their mandate. Crime isn’t just selling illegal drugs. Some of these informal drinking spots are the harbours of crime; the police need to do something about that. Maybe the government can invest more in preventing crime than fighting crime?

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