A stomach full of razors

In the flurry surrounding the police crime statistics, one might think crime is the exclusive property of the poor and powerless. Socioeconomic factors obviously play a role, but the picture is not that simple.

Justice Albie Sachs famously remarked that patriarchy was South Africa’s only truly nonracial institution. Domestic violence — one of its key symptoms — conforms to the pattern. ‘Domestic violence cuts across race, class and religion,” says Shahana Rasool of the University of Johannesburg’s social work department, who feels ‘stereotyping of poor men and black men as abusers is quite unfair”.

While poverty can be a contributing factor, ‘domestic violence is about power and control. Lots of poor men don’t commit abuse”.

Gathering data is not easy because affluent people often ‘opt out” of state services, which keep records of such incidents. Poor women might call the police and seek treatment at a state hospital, while wealthier women can summon private security guards and recover in a private room in a private clinic.

There are no accurate statistics disaggregating domestic violence cases by race or income, but anecdotal evidence from organisations in the field suggests that money and education do not necessarily serve as insulation against abuse.

‘Every community suffers domestic violence,” says Sindiswa Ngcongco of Lenasia-based Nisaa, which works with abuse survivors. ‘It’s rife in the Muslim community, but religion is often misused to prevent women from speaking out against their husbands. Women also don’t ask for help because they’re embarrassed and derive status from being the wife of Mr So-and-So.

‘Many cultures see divorce as shameful and a sign of failure for women. In African culture women who leave marriages are labelled umabuy’ ekwendeni or ‘returned soldiers’ and divorcées are seen as uncontrollable.”

Brenda Solarsh, social services manager at the Johannesburg Jewish Helping Hand, says middle-class abuse is ‘more difficult to detect and address” because ‘significant shame and stigma” help keep it under wraps. ‘Threats to withhold finances, custody battles and the loss of homes and possessions accompany other forms of abuse. A partner with access to powerful legal help might use litigation, or threaten to do so, to intimidate a partner.”

Hazel*, a nice girl from a middle-class family, told the Mail & Guardian her story because she believes many educated, affluent women refuse to admit — even to themselves — that they are being abused.

After her divorce, she met a high-profile businessman. ‘Here was this eligible bachelor, with women throwing themselves at him — and he chose me!” She couldn’t believe her luck.

She was aware of his problem with drink and drugs and, on their first date, took him to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, of which she had experience during an earlier relationship with an addict. ‘I was in chronic co-dependency, wanting to save every damaged man on earth. It made me feel needed and important.”

The beatings started after their first year together. ‘It started with mild things — he had a violent temper and I would physically recoil when he was angry. Then he started slapping and shoving me.

‘This went with emotional abuse — I was stupid, unattractive. Looking back, I see he was chipping away at my self-esteem.

‘As the beatings escalated, he would apologise, buy gifts and flowers. I had an incredible feeling of power that he was begging me to forgive him — that’s the hook abused women get into.

‘Because he was an addict and an alcoholic, it clouded my thoughts — I felt the abuse didn’t really count. I thought I was an expert on addiction, that ‘I can’t be an abused woman because I’m too smart’.”

Educated, with high self-esteem and from a close-knit family with no history of abuse, Hazel did not fit the abused woman stereotype. ‘I always had the sense that this didn’t happen to people like me. I’d seen battered women and thought they were uneducated and stupid. But at least they could admit the truth.”

Despite the violence, Hazel accepted a marriage proposal. ‘Abusers isolate their victims, so he was my only reference point. I didn’t believe anything anybody else said unless I got his approval. The less approval I had, the more I worked for it.”

Over several years she was beaten so badly she had to seek medical treatment on numerous occasions, becoming complicit with her abuser and explaining away her injuries. The doctors did not challenge her version ‘and I wouldn’t have admitted it if they had”.

Then the apologies stopped coming. ‘He stopped acknowledging what he was doing — it was my fault. If I challenged him by saying that he’d hurt me or lied to me, I’d get a beating. His face would distort into a black rage and I knew nothing could stop him.”

Hazel says she ‘normalised” the beatings in her own mind to avoid the truth. ‘I thought it was normal to live with the feeling of blunt razor blades churning in my stomach.”

The day after another attack, when a friend expressed concern about her returning home, she found herself replying: ‘I’ll be fine — he never hits me two days in a row.” She was wrong. That night, after a particularly brutal assault, she managed to escape from the house and press the panic button.

When the security company arrived to restrain him, the officer told her: ‘Lady, we get more domestic violence call-outs in Sandton than in the southern suburbs.”

By this stage Hazel was emaciated, suffering from stress-related illnesses and ‘a gibbering wreck”. She decided to file for a divorce.

But why did she tolerate the abuse for so long? ‘There’s huge shame involved — over having failed again, failing to make it work, admitting you’ve been beaten.

‘Girls are taught to be nurturing; we’re raised on fairy stories of kissing the frog that turns into a prince — When the prince kisses Snow White and asks, ‘Will you marry me?’, she should say, ‘Marry you? I don’t know if you’re an alcoholic or an addict. I need to get a job and be financially independent. And I don’t even know if you’re good enough for me’.

‘We’re so grateful when a man wants us. We’re brought up to believe that anybody is better than nobody. Society accords women a higher status if they have a man, even if he is a liar and an abuser.”

Hazel has rebuilt her life and career and repaired relationships with her family and friends. Looking back, she cannot believe what she lived through. ‘I don’t even recognise that woman any more,” she says.

* Not her real name