News24 | OPINION | To stop violent men, look at the boys they were

Why do some men become violent – and when can we intervene? Research with South African men shows how childhood trauma, poverty and ideas about masculinity can pile up, and where we may be able to interrupt the path to violence, write Yandisa Sikweyiya and Andrew Gibbs.

James learned early what a man was supposed to do when he was hurt.

He was taught to keep quiet.

As a boy, he was bullied. A family friend sexually abused him. Relatives beat him. At home, he watched his father assault his mother when they fought. Around him, he saw other men disrespect women and sometimes beat them, too.

But boys were not supposed to be frightened or sad. James learned a simple lesson: a man does not cry.

He learned something else, too: violence meant power. Men who could not defend themselves lived in fear of those who could.

James is not a real person. He is a composite character we have created from patterns that repeatedly emerge in our research with boys and men in South Africa.

And his story helps us understand something important about South Africa’s extraordinarily high levels of violence against women and girls: men do not simply wake up one day and become violent.

Violence can have a long history.

Violence has roots

Over the past three decades, research has helped us understand many of the things that make it more likely that boys and men will use violence later in life.

There is no single cause, and none of these experiences necessarily means that a boy will grow up to become violent.

But the risks can pile up.

Childhood abuse and neglect matter. So do violence at home and in the community, poverty, substance use and harmful ideas about what it means to be a man. Boys may learn that men should dominate women, are entitled to sex or should use violence to settle conflicts.

In South Africa, we also have to understand these experiences against the backdrop of our violent past, deep inequality and racism.

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Our recent research with male students at universities and colleges shows how these pressures can overlap. Young men spoke about poverty, absent or violent fathers, childhood abuse, community violence and ideas about masculinity that made vulnerability difficult to show.

This is where James’ story continues.

When violence offers belonging

As a teenager, James was lonely and looking for somewhere to belong.

He found it in a gang.

He admired its leaders and wanted their approval. Fighting other men, carrying knives and guns, robbery and selling drugs became ways to prove himself. So did sexual violence against women.

Violence brought him something he had been missing: status and belonging.

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At the same time, James started drinking alcohol and using other substances. He had never learned how to talk about fear, sadness or shame. Instead, he had learned to bury them.

This connection between masculinity and emotion is important – and it has received too little attention in discussions about why men use violence.

Men’s violence happens within a wider system in which males continue to hold power over women and girls. But emotions are part of that picture too.

Fear, humiliation, anger, grief and shame don’t develop in a vacuum. They are shaped by people’s circumstances – poverty, violence, uncertainty and unemployment – as well as by ideas about how men are expected to behave.

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And our research suggests something important: the problem isn’t that men don’t have feelings or can’t talk about them.

The circumstances in which they are expected to do so matter.

Men do talk when it feels safe

In our research with mineworkers in Marikana, men spoke about fear and vulnerability when they were given a safe and supportive environment in which to do so. Some described the trauma of seeing colleagues killed during the 2012 Marikana massacre.

Research with young men in informal settlements in eThekwini similarly showed that men experience and communicate a wide range of emotions. But what they feel able to reveal is strongly shaped by what they think a man is supposed to be.

We saw something similar among male students at universities and TVET colleges. Many described campuses as places where they didn’t feel safe showing vulnerability. They struggled to speak to their peers about emotional distress and were reluctant to seek mental health support.

Yet in spaces such as supportive therapy groups, men did talk about pain. They admitted fear and vulnerability.

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That matters because telling boys simply to “talk about their feelings” isn’t enough.

We also have to create environments in which doing so doesn’t cost them their standing as men.

What could have changed James’s path?

By young adulthood, James was struggling with his mental health.

But he had spent years learning that asking for help was a sign of weakness. And even if he had decided to seek professional help, there were few free or affordable mental health services available in his community.

Imagine, though, if some of the messages James received while growing up had been different.

What if, after he was abused, there had been a safe adult he could tell?

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What if the men around him had shown him that strength did not mean controlling women or winning fights?

What if, as a teenager, he had found belonging somewhere other than a gang?

And what if he had learned that fear, sadness and shame were emotions to understand rather than weaknesses to hide?

None of this removes James’s responsibility for the violence he later used. Understanding why violence happens is not the same as excusing it.

It is about finding the points at which we can stop it.

We already know some things work

This is where the research offers hope.

Evidence-based programmes such as Stepping Stones and and Creating Futures, which uses small, peer-led discussion groups and role-play, have shown that it is possible to help men question harmful ideas about masculinity, think differently about relationships and power, and reduce their use of violence.

But programmes need to deal with the world in which young men actually live.

That means creating safe spaces where boys and young men can talk about fear, grief, shame, failure and hope without being ridiculed.

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Mental health support should be part of violence prevention, so that young men learn to recognise emotions, manage their responses and deal with conflict without violence.

Gender-transformative programmes also need to be linked to economic support. Poverty and unemployment affect young men’s lives, identities and sense of status; we cannot pretend those pressures disappear when someone walks into a workshop about gender.

And community organisations need enough support to take programmes that work beyond small projects and reach many more boys and men.

The boy before the violent man

South Africa has recognised gender-based violence and femicide as a national crisis. Ending it requires us to protect and support women and girls, hold perpetrators accountable and confront the unequal power men continue to hold over women.

But prevention also requires us to look much earlier.

We need to see James before he joins the gang.

Before he picks up a weapon.

Before he hurts a woman.

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We need to see the frightened boy watching his father hit his mother; the child who has been abused and doesn’t know whom to tell; the teenager desperate to belong; and the young man who has been taught that admitting pain makes him weak.

Not every boy who experiences these things will become violent. Most will not.

But if we understand the conditions that make violence more likely, we have more chances to interrupt them.

The question, then, is not simply: Why do some men hurt women?

It is also: How much earlier are we willing to act?

Yandisa Sikweyiya is a chief specialist scientist at the Gender and Health Research Unit of South African Medical Research Council. His research has mainly focused on men’s and boys’ health, with particular attention on masculinities, HIV risk behaviour, and violence perpetration.

Andrew Gibbs is a senior lecturer at the Department of Psychology at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. He’s an honorary associate at the Gender and Health Research Unit, of the South African Medical Research Council.

Laura Washington, Sivuyile Khaula, Pinky Mahlangu, Mercilene Machisa, Smanga Mkhwanazi, Aviwe Belani and Nangipha Mnandi also contributed to this article.

This story was produced by the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism. Sign up for the newsletter.