This speech was delivered by GOOD National Chairperson, Sam Shabane in National Parliament during the Men’s Parliament in the National Assembly today.
Speech by Sam Shabane
GOOD National Chairperson
Good afternoon honourable Chairperson, honourable members, ladies and gentlemen…
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this discussion about one of the greatest threats to our collective humanity: Our men.
It is a subject that causes me, and the overwhelming majority of good South Africans, terrible anguish and pain.
I know that some of you might think this is old fashioned, or believe that our cultures and traditions contribute to today’s problems between the sexes, but it is simply stating the truth to say that many of us grew up being taught that men were the head of the family while mothers held the blunt side of the knife.
My understanding of these roles, with respect to men, was that it was their primary responsibility to nurture and manoeuvre the family to positions in which all family members safe and happy.
In other words, to provide structure for families to thrive.
But something has gone terribly wrong. Somewhere along the road we lost the human threads that held our families and communities together. Few feel particularly safe or happy.
We sit here today wondering where men’s moral standing has gone, where is the morality that glued our families and society together?
In the old order of things, men were not only fathers to their own biological children, but to all children.
My own father passed away when I was seven-years-old in a car accident. But although I will forever miss him, I did not feel a void growing up in a community of men who cared and understood that they had a role to play in my life.
As men, we have failed to keep these values alive. We have failed our children and grandchildren. We have failed our parents and grandparents, and the upstanding men in our communities – besides all women and girls – by casting away the wisdom taught to us to care not only for ourselves but also for others in the community.
Violence spills right into our homes, into our schools, work, public places and streets. We respond by expressing anger and rage. We have forgotten how to be compassionate, how to place ourselves in the shoes of others, how to love each other, how to be magnanimous.
The Covid pandemic has caused many to debate the balance between lives and livelihoods. Our economy was already in a general ward before the pandemic – now it’s on oxygen in the ICU.
Lying next to the economy in the ICU is our manhood.
What the patients have in common is that they both respond well to behaviour change. If we mask up and practice social distancing we leave Covid no place to multiply. Similarly, if we raise boys and young men to respect girls and women, we close the space for disrespect and violence.
History will judge us for how we respond to these crises.
If we throw our arms in the air instead of acting we’ll be in serious trouble.
To fix South Africa we need to act fast.