Dear Editor
Following shocking revelations from the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), we will write to the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, to request his presence before the Portfolio Committee to outline the Department’s response to the HSRC’s recommendations.
The findings from the HSRC’s first South African National Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Study of 2022 that a third of South African women older than 18 years – more than 7.3 million – have experienced intimate partner violence is beyond shocking.
GBV has taken on epidemic-proportions in the country where more than 2.15 million women have experienced sexual violence, and 7.84 million women have experienced both physical and sexual violence.
The experiences of the 10 012 people that partook in the study paints a grim picture of insidious belief of some men that women should “obey” them, that women cannot refuse sex with their husbands, and that some instances necessitate a woman being beaten.
Of the 4 409 men that participated, 23.9% were “at risk of clinical depression”, while more than a quarter had experienced suicidal ideation and nearly a third had attempted suicide. Many experienced childhood trauma, bullying, alcohol abuse, transactional sex, and food insecurity.
According to the study there is a high correlation between past experiences of abuse and perpetration of abuse, and that men are less like to seek assistance in dealing with their mental health.
What is troubling is that should these men and women seek assistance, they would very likely be failed by the public health system.
DA oversight inspections at provincial mental health facilities have revealed appalling conditions. We found a shortage of beds for psychiatric patients with many of them treated in casualty wards amongst other patients, at huge risk. We also found a lack of counselling programs, no security within wards where health workers and patients had been attacked, a shortage of facilities for patients to be placed after 72 hours of admittance, and no outpatient services after patients were discharged.
Regards
Michele Clarke MP
DA Spokesperson on Health