Copyright 1999. Getrude Matshe - Johannesburg, South Africa

The psychology behind black on black violence in South Africa came to light when I attended a conference in Australia in July last year. I was in a workshop with some child psychologists and one of the ladies was from Cape Town, South Africa. She told a sad story about work she was doing in one of the Black Townships in Cape Town. Every Saturday morning she gave lessons to a group of pre-school and junior primary school children who were having difficulties at school. The children were aged between five and eight years.

There was one small, five-year-old boy in the group who was always late for the lesson. After warning him three times she finally had enough and took him aside and asked him what the problem was. She threatened to kick him out of the group if he did not get to the lesson on time the next week. The small boy who always appeared to be very tough suddenly began to cry and begged the teacher not to kick him out of the class because this was the only thing he really looked forward to doing all week. His mother was unemployed and couldn't afford to send him to pre-school.

He tearfully explained why he was always late on a Saturday morning. His mother had sold him to a man who lived in a shack near his mother's shack. (A shack is a makeshift house made out of cardboard and plastics). Every Saturday morning this small boy was sodomised by this man and given money to give to his mother for this service. This money paid for the food for his mother and his six brothers and sisters and if he stopped going to this man, they would not have food to eat.

As a psychology student at the time this story helped to explain or clarify in my mind the psychology behind black on black violence in South Africa. What kind of a man would that small boy grow up to be? What kind of a mother would be forced to prostitute her five-year-old son in order to get money to feed her six children?

I looked first at the black man-child in South Africa. If you are unfortunate enough to be born poor this is what is happening to our children daily. The statistics of child abuse, child prostitution and rape in this country are shocking. But what happens to these children after the abuse, NOTHING. There are no social welfare services or psychological counseling after the event.

That child becomes a man. A man full of hatred and rage. His hatred is directed at his mother primarily and the female species as a whole. This man will rape because he was raped as a child. He will have no respect for his women folk because his own mother could not protect him when he was a child. His rage will stripe him of all conscience and incidents of gage rape and child abuse are rife in this country.

Having grown up without a male figure in his life as a role model this man will model his behavior on what he sees other men in his position doing. He will look out for his own pleasures and survival. The number of black men in our prisons is shocking. The numbers of robbery, carjacking, and murder are increasing every day and our police forces are failing to combat the violence. There is high unemployment amongst the uneducated and people resort to crime as a method of survival.

This situation is a mirror image of what is happening in the USA today; single parent families are increasing. Children are not children anymore and the black male is slowly becoming extinct…………..

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Posted by:

Bennie J. McRae, Jr.
LWF COMMUNICATIONS
Trotwood, Ohio
E-mail: lwf@coax.net

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