WHY IT MATTERS

Violence is pervasive

It’s in the headlines, shared on social media and experienced through the events and incidences in our everyday lives.

 It is not a phenomenon peculiar to a group or context

In South Africa, power and aggression is the number 1 strategy for resolving conflict. Our history and current realities make this unsurprising.

 But what is violence?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines it as: The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.

Not obvious in this definition is that violence is more than the acts of physical aggression, such as gun violence, stabbings and rape; it is also structural

It is the violence of the economic and political systems of our social world that harm, disadvantage and/or oppress people or people groups. This includes the various forms of inequality including racism and sexism. And it is historic. An overview of the last 350 years in South Africa tells us this: Obvious examples of these are Apartheid in South Africa and the Jim Crow laws in the U.S.A.

Therefore, generations of people have been exposed to numerous forms of violence and, for many people today, this past reality is also a current reality and is a future anticipated reality.

Such exposure to ongoing violence is trauma, continuous trauma. It is a generational and daily lived experience, impacting individuals, families and communities in a myriad of ways: socially, emotionally and relationally. And It is what leads to further violence.

The strategies to address such violence and the resulting trauma must be systemic, in nature and in practice, to break the cycles of violence and even poverty and see individuals, families, communities and new generations flourishing.