One of the most disturbing media articles that I have ever read was the story that was carried by both print and electronic media on January 5, 2016, the story of a 14-year-old boy who killed the family maid. The easiest thing to do for anyone reading that story would be to shrug their shoulders and assume it would never happen in their own families.
Sibusisiwe Marunda
How wrong! What happened to that Gweru family can happen to any family because it’s a sign that something is grossly wrong with our society.
On December 3, 2015 we had read about a similar case in which a 19-year-old from Gweru is alleged to have stabbed his mother five times, stole her car and went on a drinking spree. Exactly a month after that killing on January 3, 2016 a 14-year-old killed the family maid! Ordinarily, such occurrences would not happen with the frequency of just a month apart. We should still be shocked by and recovering from the first one. For such incidents to happen a month apart is worrying and could be an indication that more of such violence are happening. These two are the ones that found their way to the media. What if there are some which were never reported on? As a nation we need to ask ourselves why our children are killing us. In all fairness, I would like to state for the record that I do not purport to know the circumstances under which the two killings happened. What I know is that this is an indication that something is not right in the environment that our children are growing up and if we do not identify what the problem is, our children will kill us.
The levels of affluence in the two cases were different, with the first one happening in the posh Southdowns suburb of Gweru and the second one taking place in the low income Mkoba suburb of the same town. For me this is a pointer that this can happen to anyone anywhere, rich or poor.
Why? In seeking to understand how a child can commit such a gruesome crime I spoke to Dr Jonathan Brakarsh, a Consulting Clinical Psychologist. His expert opinion was that we need to teach our children to control and contain their emotions at a tender age of pre-school. This is done through setting a good example of emotional control in our conduct and reasoning with our children. He also pointed out that our children have unfettered access to the internet where violence and killing is found in abundance. When the child repeatedly views violent images the line between fantasy and reality can be blurred. The temptation to act out fantasy in real life is, therefore, very high for children who are impressionable.
The essence of what the experts are saying is that what our children experience in their interaction with us and the general environment around them can lead to such unfortunate incidences. Our society today is typified by a running trend of violence in all spaces that a child interacts with adults. The internet is sending clear negative messages to our children and adults are showing poor emotional modelling and a child is incessantly exposed to violent actions.
Family The primary environment that a child is in contact with everyday is the family. Today’s family environment has changed. Children are exposed to violence, either violence against children perpetrated as punishment or violence between adults. Either way when this happens children learn violence within the family.
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The debate about gender based violence leaves out the silent victim, the child, who is watching and learning. When couples resort to violence within the privacy of their homes they are teaching their children that this is the only way to resolve issues.
When it is men raising a hand against their wives or girlfriends they are teaching their sons that this is how a man deals with a disagreement with a woman. They are also teaching their daughters that it is okay to take it quietly until you die.
When each time our children make a mistake we mete out violent punishment what we are teaching our children is that the one who is physically stronger is always right, its nothing to do with principles or what is wrong or right — its about beating someone into submission.
Typically, most adult child conversations in our families consist of adults talking down to the children and expecting obedience. By taking this approach parents and caregivers miss the opportunity to teach their children negotiating and problem solving skills. Our children, therefore, grow up without these skills and are ready to force compliance through physical force whenever their views are not taken. School environment Our schools are still characterised by corporal punishment where teachers try to beat concepts into children instead of teaching. In turn, the children bully and torture those who are younger than them because they have been taught by the authority of knowledge that the only way to make someone do what you want is to apply physical violence. Last year, YouTube carried a video of school boys from a certain elite school in Marondera who were making the smaller ones beat each other up. These smaller boys obviously can’t wait to grow big so that they can beat the smaller ones. Is that what we have come to. Even animals protect the smaller ones of their species.
Law enforcement spaces Law enforcement spaces, which are supposed to be the safest, have so much violence it spills over into the community which is supposed to be protected by the law enforcement agents. Suspects are reported to experience violence at the hands of the police so much so that they at times confess to crimes they have not committed.
It even gets worse, some children, because of the circumstances within their families and within their communities find themselves in conflict with the law. Unfortunately, these children are reported to be suffering violence within police camps. A case in point is the recent video clip on YouTube that shows what appear to be police officers ordering two teenage suspects to beat each other up while they cheered, threatened and pressured the boys to apply more force on each other. I had opportunity to watch the video, its sickening. I am not sure what sick lesson the police officers were trying to teach the two minors, but for me the lesson there was to say:
●We would like to beat you up, but since we can’t we will make you beat each other up and we can watch and have fun.
●If you want to survive in this world you have to master the art of causing the greatest physical pain on those who are weaker and smaller than you
●Clearly, this experience will harden these children and they will be driven to further crime that will possibly involve violence and killing.
For now these boys have committed a petty crime, stealing and the police who are supposed to teach them right from wrong teach them how to commit the crime of violence. They humiliate and degrade them by making them compete in causing each other pain. In that wanton act of cruelty the police removed any reason or motivation for reform the boys might have had. What reason would these boys have to conform to such a cruel and unjust society? If these boys kill the next person they have a disagreement with would it really be surprising?
Community influence The unfortunate reality about exposing children to violence is that if they don’t see it in their homes they will see it in their community, the media, public and other spaces. They will one way or another be trained to resort to violence when faced with dissent. The old African adage that it takes a village to bring up a child has never been truer.
Our children are influenced by the amount of violence they see next door, at commuter omnibus ranks on TV and at the play ground! Today’s village is telling the child that if you do not get your way use force!
Our children, therefore, will kill us if we continue to expose them to violence in school, in our homes, in our neighbourhood and in our media. If we do not make a deliberate effort to show them that there is a better way. As Dr Brakarsh succinctly put it to me “The better way is that you explain, you reason, if needed you remove privileges or have the erring child do an unpleasant task but you don’t resort to violence! When you are in a position of authority and your student or child does something wrong this is an opportunity for them to learn. Violence does not teach people to choose a better path!”
Negative masculinity What I noted was that in both incidences the perpetrators were male children and in both cases the victims were women.
This, combined with the reality of numerous cases of GBV, is an indication that our boy children are being given the wrong definition of masculinity. Our socialisation and orientation of the boy-child is that a man, must be feared, must demonstrate physical dominance over those who are weaker and over women in particular. If the boy-child is then questioned by a woman, whether it’s his mother, girlfriend or family maid they feel their masculinity is being challenged and want to re-establish the power balance. Our homes and our communities are for the boy child a war zone where it must always be understood that men and boys reign supreme!
Other realities All that negative value system described above is worsened by the fact that HIV and Aids, poverty have ravaged families and left some children orphaned and without care and support. Some of these children are then forced to steal in order to survive. Some parents and caregivers are forced to migrate and leave their children under the care of paid help. These realities take away a child’s right to be a child with parental care. When children get caught stealing and killing people we need to realise that this is a result of what we have exposed them to. We need to keep in mind that they are still children and we still have an obligation to rear them.
What shall we do? There is urgent need to strengthen the family and community support mechanisms. Parents and caregivers need to be prepared to learn how to be parents, how to teach their children to control their anger when things go wrong. More importantly, adults within families and communities need to realise that the way they handle disagreements is a lesson to be emulated by their children. I have said this before at different fora, we need to urgently revisit masculinity. We need to rear a breed of young men who are big enough to say to a woman” I was wrong” without feeling emasculated.
The school system needs to be reformed and reequipped to teach and correct without using violence. We need as a nation to embrace the fact that our policemen are in urgent need of reorientation and training. They need to realise that as a group of adults entrusted with maintaining safety in communities they have an obligation towards children. They have to handle children who have made mistakes in a way that the children feel there is a reason to abandon crime.
The best interests of the child must always prevail even where the child has made a mistake, that is the promise of our constitution!
Until we accept and take steps to make these changes in all spaces that our children occupy as they grow up, they will kill us.
●Sibusisiwe Marunda is the Country Director of REPSSI Zimbabwe
