Humiliation is where the violence begins

Before violence, there is humiliation

During Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s impeachment battle, Julius Malema reached for a brutal image. Men, he said in substance, had woken up, put on suits, left their homes and gone to Parliament to abuse a woman. The image was powerful. The irony was uncomfortable.

Years earlier, an Equality Court had ordered Malema to apologise and pay R50,000 after remarks about Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser were found to amount to hate speech and harassment.

The contradiction is the problem South Africa must confront. We recognise abuse selectively. Occasionally it arrives dressed in respectability, armed with institutions, microphones, titles, procedure and a cheering faction. When the woman is ours, humiliation is violence. When she belongs to the wrong faction or works for the wrong institution, humiliation becomes accountability.

Mkhwebane had serious findings against her and ultimately lost her office. She was entitled to no immunity from scrutiny. But accountability never required stripping away her dignity.

Mamokgethi Phakeng faced false claims about her qualifications and attacks on her dress, personality and social media presence. Later, an independent UCT panel made adverse findings about her leadership. Both facts can coexist. Scrutiny does not require humiliation.

Thuli Madonsela had insults about her appearance dragged into a parliamentary hearing. Kholeka Gcaleka’s professional rise was publicly linked to an allegedly “intimate” relationship with a male superior. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma was asked whether her political ambitions were really those of her former husband.

Corporate South Africa carries its own evidence. Former African Bank chief executive Basani Maluleke has written that women leaders are routinely undermined, humiliated and objectified. Adila Chowan went to court after being described by a senior executive in racial and gendered terms and won a discrimination case.

The question is not whether the women were always right. That is the trap.

Human dignity cannot depend on factional approval, popularity, competence or whether we agree with someone’s politics. This is not the same as strangulation, assault or murder. Political criticism is not domestic violence and a damaging finding against a woman is not abuse merely because she is female.

But abuse has a grammar. Humiliate. Isolate. Sexualise. Ridicule. Threaten. Reduce a person until the audience stops seeing a human being and begins seeing a permissible target.

That matters while South Africa confronts the gruesome killing of women in Ekurhuleni. We cannot condemn brutality at its most extreme while applauding humiliation lower down the scale whenever the target is inconvenient.

Past offenders should ask what they normalised. Current offenders should examine what they are doing. Future offenders should understand how cruelty becomes ordinary.

The test is simple. Would we call it abuse if this were someone we loved?

If the answer changes with faction, party, race, class or personality, then our opposition to abuse is not principled. It is convenience.