erring men
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni
Oupa Mofokeng’s voice still trembles with anger when he relates how he was assaulted and almost killed last month because he hit his wife.
“I had a fight with my wife at about 10.30pm. She ran away with my kids and I thought she would go to her home. But before midnight I heard a knocking at the door asking me to open or something will happen,” he says.
“But before I could get there, a man came in and started to beat me. After that I could not see clearly as he hit me in the eye.”
Mofokeng is one of many victims of kangaroo justice in Evaton, east of Johannesburg. Women fed up with the slow pace of justice are turning in greater numbers to the Evaton West Community Development Forum to seek swift action against their abusive husbands.
Mofokeng managed to escape to a neighbouring house before he was injured too badly. The vigilantes chased after him and found him hiding under a bed.
“They pulled up the bed and one guy started hitting me in the stomach. Then they pulled me out of the house and threw me outside on the ground and one of them hit me with a broken bottle on the leg.”
Mofokeng says his biggest sin, as he puts it, “was that I beat my wife Maggie”.
Evaton residents, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, say men who do not come home on time or who assault their wives are often reported to the development forum. The forum was launched in 1997, to spearhead the development of Evaton West, a new township.
Mofokeng claims the African National Congress dominates the forum, which was not elected by the community, and has violated the rights of many men in the area since it was established.
He says he fears for his life after another man was assaulted by the forum last Saturday after his wife accused him of battering her.
But Mofokeng’s wife, Maggie, says the forum saved her from her abusive husband. She says she reported him after he shoved and kicked her. “I ran to the tuck shop to persuade the owner to call the police,” says Maggie Mofokeng. But she could not get hold of the police because the cellphone cut out before she could explain her situation. And then a friend “told me to report him to the forum as it is the organisation that deals with violence against women in Evaton”.
Three members of the forum followed her home. “When we got here my husband had locked himself inside the house. I then gave them a key to the house, as my husband was not willing to open the door.”
Maggie Mofokeng was given a letter by Dick Baloyi, a member of the forum, and told to take it to the police. It reads: “Please help bearer … with her problem – assault and intimidation by husband. Police warned husband to stop assault on Sunday 10th, he agreed. But assault continues. Also neighbour was assaulted.”
Oupa Mofokeng insists that what the forum has done to him “is wrong because these people who call themselves comrades cannot intervene in our family matters.
“They call themselves comrades when the police are here. But the problem is that they do not negotiate with you when they come. What they do is to beat you so that you do not beat your woman again,” says Mofokeng.
The forum denies this. Its chair, Jacob Mhlambe, said he is only aware of one case where his members were accused of assaulting a man who beat his wife. The man has opened an assault case at the Evaton police station. No arrests have been made.
Mhlambe says although he believes “men do not have a right to beat their wives”, his forum is not a platform to help victims of domestic violence.