Siya Kolisi, the tireless anti-SGBV campaigner

Siyamthanda ‘Siya’ Kolisi is a decorated South African professional Rugby Union player. In 2018, he was named the first ever black rugby captain of the South African national team, Springboks.

He successfully led South Africa to the November 2, 2019 Rugby World Cup final victory over England. He has used his prominent stature to voice his protests against gender-based violence (GBV).

Siya grew up in the impoverished, violent coastal township of Zwide, which is a 15-minute drive from the city centre of the Eastern Cape City of Port Elizabeth.

“My bed was a pile of cushions on the floor, and most nights I could hear the rats running around and feel them as they scampered over me,” he writes.

Scars

When he became an adult, he came across a young picture of his late mother, Phakama. It was the first time he had seen his mother without any scars on her face. By the time his mother died, she had been scarred numerous times by men, who had mercilessly assaulted her.

When he was just five, he engaged in a saddening traumatic experience. He collected pieces of his mother’s teeth from the dusty streets of Zwide, after his mother had been viciously assaulted by a man.

The memory of violence centres supremely in Siya’s visceral childhood memories. People fought all the time in Zwide. Men fought with men and men beat women. Siya’s mother and other women in the family were subjected to violence and men and women beat children.

Siya’s memoir, Rise, is titled after the English meaning of his mother’s isiXhosa name Phakama. The book touches on the fundamental importance of men rising up against GBV and protecting women.

Another incident that deeply impacted Siya’s life was in the Oom Cola Tavern, a local entertainment spot in Zwide. When he was a teenager, a man viciously assaulted his girlfriend for going out without him. He kicked her, smashed her face against the wall and then dragged her out of the bar by her hair.

There were hundreds of people there, and none of them protested. The incident left an infuriating emotional scar and haunted Siya, motivating him to speak up against GBV and defend women.

Sexual violence is prevalent. A woman is murdered every three hours in South Africa, a rate five times the global average. More than 100 women are raped every day in South Africa, according to police reports. With numerous unreported cases, as most rapes and sexual assault victims don’t report.

Siya elaborates that men feel entitled to have sex with women, as that’s how they’ve always perceived the power relationship between the sexes.

Polls show that the vast majority of men feel that women should obey their husband’s sexual aggression.
Majority feel that a man can never rape his wife, as he is always entitled to sex. Many men refer to domestic violence as “fixing their homes”.

Instilling values

It starts early, with the values instilled in children. Boys are taught to be tough, strong and unemotional, and this damages them in two ways.

First, it prevents them from accessing their own weaknesses, meaning they don’t know how to deal with emotionally anxious situations. Second, it sets them up on a collision course with women, who behave in very different ways.

Siya states that men have demonstrated that instances and publications of violence will not translate into the individual or collective will to stop GBV. The problem is not a lack of awareness.

Men have witnessed the very worst of violence perpetrated against women and it hasn’t inspired them to alter their behaviour.

Women know this. They know without political will, a change in the sensationalism, narratives and men’s greater involvement as allies with women in the war against the vice, nothing will change.

Men are doing these things, without facing the consequences. Siya states that people always ask “why don’t women leave abusive relationships?”, not “why don’t men stop beating women up?”

He questions why they talk about how many women were raped, instead of how many men raped women.

GBV cases aren’t don’t just happen from the blues. These are things which men do, and the way we talk about the issue needs to reflect that. Legal penalties have to be stiffer and more deterrent.

Jeff Anthony is a novelist, a Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff’s Fitness Centre @jeffbigbrother