“Men think that seeking legal protection is a woman’s thing only,” says Nombulelo Mkhuma, a paralegal at Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre.
A new study points out that both men and women are affected by domestic abuse in their families, although they experience it differently.
The study by Vera Schneider and Lisa Vetten, titled Equal or Different: Comparing Women and Men’s Use of the Domestic Violence Act, was conducted at the Johannesburg and Temba Magistrate’s Courts in 2000 and 2001. It shows that, while men become more vulnerable to abuse as they age, women get a raw deal throughout their lives.
“Some men have a perception that the Constitution protects women only when it comes to abuse and that’s not the case,” says Vetten. The numbers in the study confirm this: of 2Â 208 protection order applications over a two-year period, only 379 were made by men.
The study shows that almost 95% of women sought protection against men, while 66% of men sought protection against women (often against stalking and threat of damage to property), and only one in three men sought protection from another man.
There are reasons other than not understanding the Domestic Violence Act why men generally do not seek protection, particularly from women abusers. “Men want to appear as people who are strong, who have power and control over their relationship. Unfortunately, it’s an ego thing,” argues Mkhuma.
Vetten dismisses claims that the Act favours women over men. “That’s not true. Men who are abused are able to use the law. The fact that the numbers of women seeking protection are higher than men is because women are more abused.”
According to the study, more men sought protection from a family member than women; 43% of men compared to 18% of women. But as men age, they become more vulnerable to all sorts of abuse.
“More than half of those seeking protection from a family member are seeking it from their children … A relatively high proportion of victims were pensioners,” the report says.
According to the study, women are most likely to seek protection from physical, economic and sexual abuse, but both women and men need help with emotional abuse and stalking.
A worrying factor for the researchers was the difficulty in accessing information on protection orders.
“We could not check the records because they had been destroyed by the courts,” the report says, of some cases.
“This is a big problem if our courts cannot keep records of people who sought protection two or three years down the line. If [someone has] been killed, it means the police cannot trace whether the victim was killed by a person whom she or he sought protection from,” says Vetten.