Abuse: My father was verbally and psychologically abusive to my mother and showed no affection for  his children

By Professor Corné Davis

My father was the only son of an only son of an only son. He was brought up to believe that he could walk on water — simply because he was aman. He felt entitled to behave as though everyone was there to serve him and be subordinate to him.

As a father, he could not connect with me and my siblings. He believed that children were to be seen and not heard. And he was incapable of providing us with affection. He was verbally, emotionally and psychologically abusive to my mother and to his children.

My mother passed away in a car accident when I was 14, and after that, we became victims of domestic violence. In fits of rage, he would go through the house with a gun, threatening to shoot us all. As you might imagine, this period of my life had a huge impact on me.

I was 18 when I left my home in the EasternCape to come to study in Johannesburg. I borrowed money from a relative to pursue my degree in communications, and shortly after, I met the first man I married.

He, too, was abusive — violent and aggressive. I believe I found myself in an abusive marriage because I had an abusive childhood. My lack of self-esteem meant that I was easily victimised.

Studies have shown that girls who have absent fathers are likely to battle with their self-esteem and are far more likely to accept abuse later in life. We think that we deserve that kind of behaviour; it is what we have learnt to accept.

Having a positive relationship with a present father, on the other hand, has proven to be a preventative measure against many risks, of which gender-based violence is one.

I am finally in a stable, happy relationship today, but it has taken me a long time to get here. I carried a lot of resentment and anger for my father for a long time — resentment and anger that negatively affected me, not him. I did not speak to him for 10 years.

In 2010, I confronted him about what had happened during my childhood. While he apologised, I could see that, in his mind, he still did not  quite believe that he had done anything wrong. It was simply the way that he was brought up: believing that his behaviour was right, that he was entitled to be obeyed and worshipped. But I got it off my chest, and said what I needed to say.

My father passed away in 2015, and in the years before his death, we had a relatively good relationship. Becoming a gender-based violence activist has been a huge part of my healing journey — and it has become a passion. I have experienced abuse first-hand. And I believe I am in a position to help others.

Studies clearly show that absent fathers, or fathers who are present but abusive, put children at greater risk of being victims of violence, including gender-based violence, later in life. And boys who grow up in these sorts of households are more likely to become perpetrators of violence.

There is no doubt that encouraging men, not just biological fathers, to become more actively and positively involved in children’s lives is one of the most important ways we can halt the cycle of gender-based violence and violence against women and children.

Unfortunately, this information is not widely available. People do not understand gender-based violence, why it happens, how to prevent it, and how to heal from it. But this learning, prevention and healing is possible. If we can educate people and help them break the silence, then we can help to nurture long-lasting changes in our homes, communities and society.

• Corné Davis is Associate Professor in the Department of Strategic Communications at the University of Johannesburg. She is also an advisor to TEARS Foundation and an advocate for positive fatherhood through initiatives such as Heartlines Fathers Matter.

IS IT REALLY BREAKING NEWS?

Riddle: Or is it broken news in a badly broken world?

By Njabulo P Vilakazi

Should it really make breaking news when a woefully long broken duplicitous Joe Biden comes out to finally broadcast his broken homosexuality of ages at 79? That for you is the man who hid his natural sexuality for so long so he could one day safely be elected US President even if one lousy term….

Should it be breaking news material, if a most high-achieving student of Harvard born with one eye in the middle of his head announces his candidature for the American presidency.

Should citizens especially the religious, fear for the end of the world, at hand? Should they true Biblical Old Testament tradition ask as to who had sinned in the bloodline; his father, grand or great-grand father?

If some unethical doctor releases biological facts about a president of a county, saying   he has the smallest penis in at least his cabinet, should he be recalled, should he be impeached for not revealing fact about teeny-weeny manhood and thereby risking the security of the State; ‘how the hell do you trust such a president presiding over and managing folk more sexually endowed than him…’

Maybe it’s if some mistress releases a media scoop to the effect her secret consort, the president, has been giving his manhood an enlargement treatment and she shows photographs of before and   after the domestic self-treatment, to the interested media…

But, man, as the Joe Biden saga: were all American folk, their news hyenas and their pussycats not awake to the Joe Biden who, when Barack Obama was running for President, he had said an over-the-board remark that: ‘I mean you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and nice-looking guy, I mean that’s a storybook man’

There went this man ultimately self-outed; sweeping down the images of Jesse Jackson, Muhamad Ali, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Will Smith (Will, being the most infamous Hollywood star-cucked ever- just to name a miniscule few-) just because I guess had badly lusted for the flesh of this former Negro men friends.

Then, on his inauguration program, he lists up right at the top some drop-dead handsome African American preacher to do the most prime thing for such an august night – the Benediction – Reverend Sylvester Beaman, and the whole AME church to which Beaman pastored goes the most agog to a point that he, as a candidate for the bishopric, finally walks into the position of bishop just like John walking into Jerusalem. And I mean the real McCoy Jerusalem, not the Netanyahu/Biden make-believe one.

Now I have come to realise that people  fret and groan about anybody’s sexuality, all their lives are suffering from deeply problematic and dubious sexuality of themselves; thus they badly fear its exposure by others, and I don’t mean the Americanised-commercialised-politicised fad that has become with most bawdy ostentatious parades  on our streets, as if  this phenomenon wrought in all creatures without exception, is brand new and was not there specifically  in the human  formation out of Adamah -The Soil…

By big default, Biden has just thrown his friends to the gay predator wolves, preachers, evangelists and their parroting fundamentalist lay-person et al…

 I have heard a few people suggesting already that Obama is gay. But, above all, I fear for the scrutiny the detractor of persons in high office and have-been male friends to this old crooked geezer who has put his sexuality to an over-extended furlough of 79 years are going to be subjected to, as he now publicly plays out his damned sexuality as though it was just on a sabbatical and now fully and bodily back to work…

I remember how some AME bishops were hounded in the eighties by gay head hunters, to be put to tribunals, synagogues and State law-courts, that they should be denuded and cleared out of the bishopric bench.

I am not sure what is a more educated stance of the AME church on this now Biden-ated matter, Big Time, since the burgeoning emergence of pastors like the Rev Teboho Klaas in South Africa, taking a stand for the LGBTI+ just as the now liberation theology-defunct church here took a stand on the side of the poor against apartheid.

• Paul Njabulo Vilakazi is pastor and writes in his personal capacity