Africa-Press – Eswatini. Eswatini Association for Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders (ESACRO) has weighed-in on the call for declaring gender-based violence (GBV) as a national disaster.
It has called for psychological wellness of perpetrators.
The NGO, which its mandate is on crime prevention and the rehabilitation of convicted persons, said GBV cases were a nightmare and a grave concern, bearing mostly the face of men.
“It’s concerning to see men and young boys abusing to a point of killing their partners over minor mis-understandings, not to say if it were major it would have been better. Men need to start taking serious care of their psychological wellbeing, emotions and their self-esteem just to name a few,” ESACRO Communications Officer Ncamiso Motsa said.
ESACRO said there was a need for dismantling masculinities and for men to think that it was manly to show roughness and being physical.
“We are not here to judge or tell people how to handle their relationships or themselves for that matter, but instead we are just laying out some advice,” Motsa said.
He said men need to denounce phrases like ‘take it like a man’, ‘man up’, ‘men don’t cry’, ‘don’t be a sissy.’
Such contributed to the socialisation of men having to mind emotions, hurt, heartache and many other emotional and psychological roller costars which they don’t get help for.
Other men, he said, bring down others and label them as ‘weaklings of men.
“Before anyone assumes any gender, they should first understand that they are human before anything else. Men are encouraged to talk about their feelings amongst each other. “Anything beyond you is worth sharing. This is not the kind of men who will lead us to the intended future.”
Motsa also pleaded with the incoming legislators to pass laws focusing on rebuilding men.
He said such laws and community projects should be constituency-based allowing for most men to hold periodic “lisango talks” amongst themselves.
Mental health professionals come through and educate men should be encouraged at tinkhundla level, adding also that GBV should be declared a national disaster.
“At the rate the killings of our mothers, sisters and daughters at the hands of so called “boyfriends, husbands” are happening, this should be declared a national disaster and pandemic, just like COVID-19.
Let us not wait until someone ‘prominent’ is murdered by their husband or boyfriend until we try and implement programmes which should have been implemented. As men, let us familiarise ourselves with words like ‘anger management, self-esteem, it hurts, I need help.
Women are not by any chance subordinates to men, but instead their partners. No man, for whatever reason should think they own any women out there.”
Perpetrators need help just like victims.
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