Violent expression reflects perceptions of invisibility

What you need to know:

  • Often, society conspires to place these young people in a space where they are not to be seen or even heard.
  • We must look them in the eye and acknowledge their existence.

A couple of weeks ago in Johannesburg, South Africa, I attended a conference organised by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in collaboration with the War Trauma Institute of the Netherlands.

The main aim of the conference was to explore the connections between mental health and psychosocial support services and peace building.

Experts from different parts of the world and different professions with a common interest in peace building met and exchanged ideas on how to deal with the trauma associated with conflict in order to create an environment that fosters peaceful coexistence.

The xenophobic attacks that had spread across South Africa targeting African migrants provided an important backdrop for this meeting.

Participants at the conference agreed that it is necessary to understand the context a potentially violent person inhabits, and the things that go through his mind before and during the violent attacks.

It emerges that a series of events are often responsible for violent eruptions in many of our societies.

Firstly, as we have established before, violent behaviour is common among poor young males living alone or with poor social support structures.

However, these four factors are not sufficient to trigger violent behaviour.

Often, society conspires to place these young people in a space where they are not to be seen or even heard. In order to attain prosperity, or to appear to be approaching prosperity, we hide our poor in inaccessible slums, and allow them only the most basic of amenities.

Over time, we dehumanise them, and ensure that they feel excluded from all economic spheres. Inevitably, it takes only a trivial trigger to set off a chain of violence.

HERE WE ARE

During the conference, a powerful presentation by Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela of the University of the Free State brought home the role of violent eruptions as an expression of being or existence.

According to her, the violent youth are symbolically facing society and asserting their existence as persons. They may feel that only through violence can their existence be acknowledged by “society”.

To my understanding, then, the trigger for this violent behaviour seems to be a feeling of invisibility, a new form of “marginalisation” that pushes the poor and vulnerable members of society to the dark periphery where they are not even officially acknowledged.

When an opportunity to assert their existence arises, they grab it with both hands and take full advantage of it.

This, to me, explains why many youth engaging in mass violence continue to do so even in the full glare of media cameras, almost acting out for the cameras, telling the society that “even though you deny my existence, here I am. I exist”.

Understanding this point of view enables us to design interventions that have a realistic chance of reducing violence on this continent.

First, of course, we must design programmes that deal with poverty and unemployment among our youth, promote gender equity in decision-making bodies and enhance social support for our young people.

However, no intervention will achieve any measure of success unless it also builds in strategies for increasing the visibility and participation of these young people in important sectors of our economy.

In short, we must look them in the eye and acknowledge their existence. We must tell them, “We see you. You exist. And we are available to help you achieve your dreams.”

Prof Lukoye is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Dean, Moi University School of Medicine [email protected]