What is wrong with South African men's psyche towards their women?

I few weeks back a 21 year old boy, killed his girlfriend, helped by a couple of friends. The boy allegedly cut open the woman's stomach and pulled out her intestines, leaving them strewn on the ground. The girl managed to survive long enough to be able to identify her attacker.

In my Shona culture anybody below mid-20s, or older but not married is, also considered a boy.

Both the killers and the victim lived in a poor downtrodden suburb of a Western Cape town. One is therefore very much tempted to think that the violence was a function of the poverty.

However just this week, any such notions, were quickly blown away like a Sahara mirage in a sandstorm. Two of the most popular and wealthiest people in South Africa were involved in a fatal incident that according to some reports has connotations of domestic violence. Oscar Pistorious an internationally renown sportsman shot his girlfriend, an equally well known model. It is the South African equivalent of Brad shooting Angelina, or David shooting Victoria.

Oscar says he mistook her for a burglar. Neighbours claim there had been audible arguing in residence and before the shooting, so much that police had to be called. It does not help that Reeva Steenkamp is no longer alive to tell her side of the story. The press is also awash with claims that Oscar was temperamental and aggressive.

I am no Imam or Cardinal Bishop but I am not a particular fan of FHM and similar magazines either. So until after her death the name Reeva Steenkamp would not have aroused any inkling in me. However after reading reports that her skull had been crushed and a bloodied cricket bat was also found in residence, I couldn't help feeling as if my own sister had been mercilessly butchered.

Why? Why? Why? What is wrong with some South African men's psyche towards their women? One cannot help but wonder.

It appears as if South African women are treated as objects, expected to do whatever the men want. If these objects do not fulfil the desired function they not only discarded but destroyed - cruelly.

If a woman is unwilling to do something there is no attempt to persuade. She is also not left alone. What is desired by the man is violently taken. The violence is typically carried out using lethal weapons.

Recently a work colleague had a disagreement with her husband over suspicious emails he was exchanging with another woman. She was told the only way the marriage was going to end is through a gun. This is a middle class well educated couple.

It was St Valentine's day. We should have been giggling over gossip about roses and chocolates. Here we are, riveted accounts of by guns, cricket bats and crushed skulls. It is so sad.

I am a Zimbabwean and will not claim that my culture is a paragon of civility and domestic tolerance. Husbands, wives and lovers do fight, but not with guns, knives, broken bottles and cricket bats.

One of the major grievances leading to the xenophobic pogrom of 2008 was that foreign men took, not only jobs, but women as well. Given the way some South African men treat their women, it is not surprising that many rush into the arms of men whose culture and upbringing is not so gratuitously violent towards women.

My advice to some South African men is that aggressiveness is not a mark of manhood. It is often a sign of deep seated insecurity and weakness. People afflicted by inner weaknesses often try to compensate by showing aggressive physical strength.

Certainly, South Africa as a country needs much less of this kind of publicity. Already the tag 'rape capital of the world' is bad enough. It is not surprising that some foreigners, like Shrein Dewani alleged to have arranged the murder of his wife in South Africa, may have thought South Africa is just the perfect country to get away with domestic violence.

That is not a nice thing to have people thinking about a country. Given the events of the past few weeks, one woman's stomach slit open, another one's head crushed, allegedly, with a cricket bat, it is difficult to see how South Africa is going to get rid of that notion.

Certainly this cannot be blamed on apartheid. One couple was black and poor, but the other was white and wealthy.

France: The right kind of intervention

Francois Hollande rightly and deservedly got a rousing welcome in Mali. Hollande's intervention was to support the state of Mali and enhance its stability.

This is in stark contrast to the intervention of Sarkozy in Libya which was to attack the state of Libya in the guise of attacking Gadhafi, weakening and destabilising the state. To this date Libya has not recovered from that destabilisation. To this day Libyans are living in a condition of insecurity, near lawlessness and virtual warlord rule because of that unwise intervention.

That unwise intervention also opened doors for terrorists and other hardline militants resulting in the murder of the American ambassador to Libya. Such doors would never have been open if a properly managed transition had been allowed in Libya.

It is also worth noting the Hollande's intervention came after a long period of careful consideration and consultation. As a result France has the full backing and support of the African Union and regional countries. This is in stark contrast to the intervention in Libya where the attitude towards the African Union was disdainful to the point of bordering on insulting.

I hope this also opens the eyes of those with myopic vision to the fact that criticism of the West does not amount to hate of the West.

There are people who hate the West for no good reason. Some of us criticise the West because of very good reasons.

The fact that Hollande could mingle with a crowd in Timbuktu illustrates my point. Would he dare to go and mingle with a crowd in Benghazi? Let alone would he hope to hear even one person shouting 'Vive la France' in the later.

Hollande stood with the people of Africa the right way. Sarkozy led the humiliation of the people of Africa through direct snubs to the African Union. Yet if we look at events in Mali and Libya today, it is clear that the AU were wiser than Sakorzy.

Unfortunately we live in a world where the mistakes and misdeeds of the powerful countries are swept under the carpet of international justice. Only the weak, and particularly African, countries who don't have the power to veto appointments to well paid international civil service jobs, are pursued with quixotic vigour.

Such justice clearly influenced by the politics of the stomach and pockets can never be truly balanced justice.

If Obama was half as wise as Hollande the world would be a much better place. The truth has to be said. I am not going to stand in his corner simply because he is an African brother.

The land question still has not been properly addressed in Zimbabwe's new constitution.

The land question still has not been addressed properly in the new constitution. The 'new' constitution is the same old hag with a new layer of make-up.

The system of priviledged land ownership left behind by colonial dispensation has not been substituted with a more inclusive system.

Under the new constitution 90% of rural dwellers will still be living in untitled communal lands or to use their original name, native reserves.

From the way the constitution is written it is clear that there is no intention of addressing the lack of constitutionally protected tenure that prevails in the former native reserves. The politicians are focused on fighting for tenure rights on priviledged and titled former whites only land. They seem to have forgotten the urgent need to give the dwellers of 'native reserves' constitutionally protected tenure.

Under this so called new constitution, what happened to the people of Tangwena in the Rhodesia days, and what happened to the people of Chiadzwa just recently, is still possible. Peasants can be kicked out of the homes they have lived in for generations with no possible recourse to the law. None of them has got title deeds to the land they call home, so they cannot go to court like the formerly priviledged class, white farmers, are doing.

Both Zanu-PF and the old colonial dispensation are united in fighting for the rights of only the priviledged. What is widely and incorrectly passed off as land reform, is merely the  fight is over who should be occupying the priviledged position between the new political elite and the descendants of colonial settlers.

While the peasants and other under-priviledged groups such as farmworkers are useful pawns, especially when voting time comes, nobody has given careful thought to their land rights and needs.

During the colonial era Africa was cursed with leaders who didn't have a vision beyond their skin colour. Today Africa is cursed with leaders who don't have a vision beyond their pockets. We should look at the land question beyond the pockets of the political elite and the skin colour of the settler occupiers.

The growing trend of headmen and chiefs selling land, will eventually lead to massive chaos if it is not arrested by constitutionally protected tenure. My suggestion is that current homesteads and fields (misha, imizi) should be surveyed, pegged and the owners given some form of constitutionally recognised title (either deed of lease, or deed of grant) to their homes.

Let me make it clear that this is not targeted at chiefs and headman. I only mentioned them to highlight one of the many bad trends that lack of constitutionally protected tenure in communal lands is giving rise to. In fact, they too need constitutionally protected tenure, on their very own homesteads.

Right now the constitutional owner of communal land is the state. The state can take communal land and give it to private companies (Sviba Hills), or even foreigners (Chiadzwa), or preferred individuals (Tangwena in the 1960s).

The people in the communal lands need to be protected from the whims of unscrupulous 'leaders' by legally secured tenure. These leaders could be politicians hoping to make a huge killing, headman and chiefs selling pieces of land for a quick buck, or administrative officials taking advantage of people.

For a long time land reform has been couched in the language of taking land back from white descendants of colonial invaders. However to me proper land reform should include bestowing constitutionally protected land rights to the residents of former native reserves. They were denied these rights by colonialists for reasons of oppression. Continuing to deny them these rights is continuing the oppression.

Peasants need land rights that are economically actionable in the modern Roman-Dutch law based legal and economic systems.