National outcry against social ills is missing in SA – Machel
Humanitarian and activist Graça Machel has lashed out at the lack of collective outrage by South Africans about the rapidly escalating brutalisation of women and children by men.
She appealed to social science faculties within higher education institutions to assist the country in re-building a values-based society.
“For at least three generations, South Africa has harboured unstructured families that lack the necessary building blocks of love, care, values and principles. The country is in crises; it’s in a state of social decay. Women, the elderly and children are under violent attack. The rapid movements from rural to urban areas necessitated by oppression have broken the traditional village values most of us were privileged to have. The family structure and its values are in tatters,” she lamented.
Machel was giving a keynote address at the third annual Archbishop Thabo Makgoba Development Trust Lecture, titled: ‘Values-based Leadership’. The event was recently hosted by the Rhodes Business School at Rhodes University.
She presented bleak statistics that show that one in three young people has experienced some form of abuse and that the child murder rate in SA is more than double the global average.
The statistics indicate that 40 per cent of men assault their partners daily and, most shockingly, a woman dies at the hands of her partner every eight hours.
“We hear all of this in the media and we carry on with our lives as if it has nothing to do with us. A country of 56 million people is not outraged enough, men are not outraged and women’s organisations are equally not outraged. People are overwhelmed and have developed a high level of tolerance. This system needs a reboot and I think higher education holds the last hope for the nation,” she said.
Machel, Chancellor at the University of Cape Town, singled out the youth as the only social group that is protesting against this social injustice.
She encouraged this group, especially those that are in tertiary institutions, to equip themselves with the necessary basic values so they can instil them back into society.
“Their parents were brought up in unstructured families and when they become parents they pass on a system of disconnect and emotionally scarred people. We have normalised violence and corruption. Generation after generation, there is no sense of boundaries,” she said.
She said if the most important units develop a value-based society then family, school, and religion can work together and salvage some structure that we can continuously build on.
“Tertiary institutions need to help us change our behaviour, not in abstract, but to touch our souls and heal us. The young people you have are more aware of the absence of values and dignity than most elders are. Start here and help them re-build the family unit in order to shape a desirable society,” she concluded.
She called on society to remember the African way – the collective, respect for the elderly, respect for the family structure, and most importantly for each person to respect the mere existence of another life.
