Inside the surge in Gender Based Violence

Growing vice: Gender-Based Violence cases are again hitting the headlines PIC: NKAFU.ORG
Growing vice: Gender-Based Violence cases are again hitting the headlines PIC: NKAFU.ORG

About three in five women in Botswana are victims to violence, making the country a breeding ground for gender-linked hate crimes. Week in week out blood spills across “peaceful” Botswana. Mmegi Staff Writer, TIMOTHY LEWANIKA, writes on the latest surge

Can we really proclaim that Botswana is a peaceful country when it is purging itself of human life, clearly undermining that self-proclaimed title?

Over the past festive season, police recorded 298 reported offences against persons, with 181 of them being Gender Based Violence (GBV)-linked crimes. That is 60.7% of total reported crimes being gender based.

At least 93 women were raped between 19th December 2024 and 5th January 2025 according to official data shared by Botswana Police Service, meaning that for a population of less than 2.5 million people, close to 100 women were raped in a short period of two weeks. And that only includes reported cases.

In an interview, prominent psychologist, Dr PJ Van Der Walt, who has a PhD study in domestic violence, told Mmegi that what the country is going through is part of a long-term historical trend.

According to van der Walt, the methods used in raising children in Setswana culture as well as the modern education system, have worsened the GBV scourge.

“There is a correlation between Gender-Based Violence and the way children are raised at home historically,” van der Walt told Mmegi.

“Studies have shown that Botswana has the highest per capita rate of domestic violence cases. “Now children grow up in these violent homes and grow up to become perpetrators of the same violence to their partners in future.”

Van der Walt went on to share that according to his expert opinion, there was a lot of violence against women in the previous generations that has almost made violence against women a norm in modern Botswana.

“Because yesterday’s children, who are today’s adults, grew up seeing and experiencing violence at family level, it has become a part of them to perpetrate the same crimes against others today,” he said.

“The failure of parental styles and the poor family set ups that exist in Botswana society have also not made it any easier.”

According to van der Walt, Botswana has dilapidated family structures characterised by most of them being female-headed with absent fathers, leading to a legend that the fathers have been hit by “terena”. This according to Walt has distorted the perception young growing girls have of fathers, leading to poor choices of partners in their future lives.

He added that that the progression of society and its heavy reliance on materialism to survive has worsened the pressure men face and in their capacity as the heads of most homes, “they just can’t take the pressure”.

“They take out the pressure on women, inflicting violence on them as a way of dealing with the inner turmoil of not being able to cope with the pressures of materialism,” he said.

Social researcher, Chandapiwa Dipheko, who is currently doing her Masters research on GBV with the University of Botswana, attributed the surge in gender related crimes on socio-economic changes and pressures hitting society.

According to her, the disruption in the normal patriarchal structure of society that apportions unequal rights to men and women and sets men at the apex of all societal structures, has caused violence to surge. This, she says, is caused by an increasing power struggle between the two genders as males try and maintain dominance and power over women who are now financially liberated from the shackles of patriarchy.

“There is a power struggle between, men and women. Men traditionally used to head families based on their economic power to provide for their families.

“But with the progressive rise of women, this has threatened the old abnormal power structures of the family.

“In order to try and maintain control or regain this power, some men have resorted to violence,” she said.

A previous GBV study by Gender Links and the Women's Affairs Department found out that most of the reported violence occurred within intimate relationships. About three in every five women (62%) experienced violence in an intimate relationship while about half of the men (48%) admitted to perpetrating intimate partner violence.

“About 30% of women experienced violence, while 22.4% of men perpetrated GBV in the 12 months before the survey.

“Emotional partner violence is the most common form of intimate partner violence experienced by women (45%) and perpetrated by men (37%) in the sample in their lifetime,” the report revealed.

The findings from the survey and police data showed that GBV is the most flagrant violation of human rights in Botswana, yet only six percent of the 188 speeches by politicians in the year before the study, focused on GBV while nine percent made some mention of the scourge.

The study further found that only five percent of monitored news articles from Botswana covered GBV and in these, perpetrators were three times more likely to be heard than survivors.

The 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women describes the term “violence against women” as any act that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.

This week, President Duma Boko shared his view of the problem facing this country, arguing that is much broader than violence perpetuated on people because of their gender. He said generally Batswana have turned out to be very a violent people, independent of how they perpetuate it.

“We are a violent nation. We are violent, each and every one of us. We need to be honest. We are a violent society. We teach and reinforce violence in our schools. We socialise children into an understanding that order must be exacted through violence” he said.

According to Boko socialisation at schools happens through how students are punished for either failing or being delinquents has also exacerbated the crisis.

“When we violently punish students, this is exactly what entrenches violence into these children, who will eventually develop into problematic adolescents and, ultimately, into a violent nation,” he said.

“In the end, when violence erupts in pockets all over, we climb onto our moral high horse—those of us who have not been found out—and we condemn from the rooftops, forgetting our own complicity.

“We are violent as a nation, each and every one of us.”

The phenomenon of unequal power structures between men and women is not just a Setswana culture phenomenon, but can also be traced back to historical institutions of society such as religion.

In one of her studies, Professor Musa Dube, a theologian and feminist of note, says that unequal power relations between men and women track back to the cultures of the Roman Empire and Israel.

In her study she found that the Roman Empire with its Greek cultural overtones was structured along class and patriarchal lines. With power lying primarily in the hands of rich men who could use their wealth to maintain peace for the empire.

Families consisted of the male head of the house, followed by the son, wife, children, servants and slaves. Political stability was believed to be dependent on the maintenance of this basic structure; that is, everyone was supposed to know their place and role in the family structure.

The leader of the house was to ensure that all stayed in their places. The political peace of the Roman Empire itself would be violated if slaves, women and children were not kept under control by the master of the house. Yet since wealth was a major category of social influence in the Roman Empire, women who had property often became publicly recognised and were given leadership roles. This pointed to the historic backdating of unequal power relations between the men that often suppressed women.

“Economically, women in many cultures are under their fathers, brothers or sons, who back then, were legal property owners. Religiously women were defined as subordinate to their husbands and as child bearers (Genesis 3: 16), and women were sometimes also listed together with the property of their husbands (Exodus 20: 17),” Dube shared in her study.

Dube in her study further charged that women were also associated with "uncleanness" and were variously characterised as tricksters, seducers and prostitutes (Eve, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Esther Bethsheba, Jezebel), a portrait that is consistent with the notion that "a man cannot trust a woman without planning his own downfall"

“The good women were portrayed in their stereotypical roles as mothers and wives (Sarah, Elisabeth, Rebecca, Naomi, Hannah). This portrait served to confirm the image of women as solely domestic players.

“In short, women were unlikely to be found in public leadership roles or to own property” she said.

Editor's Comment
UDC's 100 Days: Please deliver your promises!

We duly congratulate them to have ousted the long ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) from power. Prior to taking power from the BDP, the coalition had made several election promises that are credited for influencing change and swaying the people to vote in its favour.The party had made an undertaking, which its leader and President Duma Boko consistently bellowed in his campaign trail. These undertakings were promises that Batswana would be...

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