The Women For Change’s petition and call for the cancellation of Chris Brown’s upcoming concert in South Africa exposed our patriarchy.
The call is based on his long history of abusing women, with reference to him abusing singer Rihanna in 2009. Regardless of South Africa’s stigma of gender-based violence (GBV), others rushed to social media to defend the American singer, even sharing their excitement about attending the concert.
The sad reality is that the Women For Change advocacy against GBV proved futile given that the tickets sold out in a matter of hours.
South Africa prioritises profit over everything, social well-being, its own state agenda, and social factors. The overwhelming support for Brown in a country that is labelled the world’s rape capital shows we lack understanding of how we gained this jarring reputation.
The patriarchy is at the centre of it. Sylvia Walby, radical feminist scholar, broadly analysed patriarchy as a social system that prioritises men and sees them as superior to women. It is rooted in the oppression and marginalisation of women.
She identified six social structures and practices that create and reinforce the patriarchy, namely:
- Household production: which includes everything from the hierarchy of importance within the family, with women’s roles often seen as inferior and accompanied by unpaid domestic work.
- Labour: where women are either excluded and discriminated against and or paid less.
- Culture: which entails ideologies and praxis that portray women as inherently inferior, a view often reinforced by religion, media, and even language.
- Sexuality: ensures that women’s sexuality is more controlled, while men have more freedoms. Women have less bodily autonomy and agency.
- Violence: GBV and sexual abuse give men power over women, leaving women subdued and fearful.
- The state and related structures: legal systems and policies have a long history of perpetuating systematic and direct violences against women.
We have seen some very influential celebrities, leaders we love and look up to, support Brown or criticise Women For Change’s boycott.
In doing so, they have attempted to compartmentalise abuse as separate from Brown’s artistry and work.
South Africa has its own fair share of these kinds of demonic perpetrators who hunt women for sport.
The problem with our division as a country (especially as women) over issues like the Brown boycott, is that we believe we are different and have therefore transcended some of the patriarchal oppressions. You could be a young, poor woman, wearing next to nothing, twerking in a hip-hop music video for a living, or a church woman and highly respected member of your community, married with children and a thriving career in what is perceived as an important industry – the patriarchy does not care. It treats us all with the same brutality.
We must see ourselves in the experiences of the women who come forward against artists like Brown because it could easily be one of us.
- In the world’s rape capital, this threat of violence follows us everywhere – churches, schools, our homes, workplace – even mundane places like the post office.Dr Nombulelo Shange is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Free State (UFS).
