SIZANANI FOUNDATION

 

Gender-based violence, Unemployment and poverty are the most dominating social issues in South Africa and there is a lot of misinformation going on about these issues. It is believed that Gender-based violence is only experienced by women and most organizations that address and support people who have experienced GBV focus on women. They keep on empowering women only but who empowers the men that go through the same pain as these women? Who goes and talk to them about regaining their dignity and listens to their problems? It is sad how men are ignored because they are believed to be the ones who always abuse women. They are never taken seriously by the society when they report the cases and those are the things that lead to mental illness such as depression and they end up committing suicide. In some cases Gender-based violence is caused by poverty, it is very frustrating for some people to not be able to provide for their families and they end using violence towards their partners as a stress reliever and lastly poverty is caused by unemployment. So that’s why these three social issues are dominating in our country, they are like a circle because one is caused by another.

According to the department of statistics in South Africa 49.2% population over the age of 18 falls below the upper-bound poverty line. The misinformation about poverty is that people are poor because of personal traits such as educational levels. According to people their lack of education leads them to poverty but there are actually a lot of people out there who did not go far with education but are not poor and some of them are even rich. Poor people are always made to lack self worth and they are looked down on by others but what people don’t know is that poverty is also caused by unemployment. If people don’t have jobs they wont be able to provide for their families and that leads to poverty and even if they do have jobs, the job market always fails to provide a proper number of jobs which pays enough to keep families out of poverty. It is always said that a poor individual’s lack of prosperity shows a personal failing and should not be justified by the state. But how? When the state is the one not providing jobs and some people didn’t have any personal failings and by that I mean that they finished matric and got their degrees and diplomas in university but they are still poor.

We as the SIZANANI Foundation provide support to people who have faced social issues and correct others from the misinformation and conspirancy theories that they believe in. Gender-based violence is not only experienced by women there are a lot of men who hide their pain because they would rather die inside than be a laughing stock and haveto deal with the shame that comes with reporting GBV as a man. We need to change that, we need to do better as a country these men are our fathers and brothers and they also need a shoulder to cry on too. Poverty is not caused by lack of education, there are thousands of poor people sitting at homes with Diplomas, Degrees, Honours, Masters and PHD’s and you want to know why? because the unemployed rate in our country is high and that’s what people don’t look into because we live in a very ignorant, stereotyped and judgemental society and lastly education or school does not teach people how to make money.