A Sunday World opinion piece has made an argument that deserves wider attention: that the culture of gender-based violence in South Africa does not begin with physical harm. It begins, the author contends, with humiliation — and that South Africa's institutions, including its corporate sector, have been far too comfortable with the humiliating treatment of women in positions of authority.
The argument draws on a pattern that is recognisable to many women who have reached senior levels in South African public life. Former Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane faced sustained personal attacks during her impeachment proceedings that went well beyond legitimate legal scrutiny. Thuli Madonsela, her predecessor, endured comments about her appearance in parliamentary settings. Mamokgethi Phakeng, a distinguished mathematician and university vice-chancellor, faced fabricated claims about her credentials and persistent personal attacks.
In the corporate sphere, the piece draws on the testimony of Basani Maluleke, the former CEO of African Bank, who has written publicly about the experience of women leaders being routinely undermined, humiliated, and objectified in professional environments that pride themselves on governance and professionalism. Adila Chowan's successful discrimination litigation — she was subjected to racial and gendered language by an executive — offers legal confirmation of what many women describe anecdotally.
The author's central thesis is that humiliation follows a recognisable grammar: isolation, sexualisation, ridicule, and threats that progressively strip the target of their humanity. This grammar is practised in boardrooms, in parliament, in newsrooms, and in homes. The distinction between these settings is often less sharp than institutional comfort would suggest.
The piece also challenges the selective outrage that characterises much public discourse about gender-based violence — the willingness of some who claim to oppose violence to engage in the humiliating rhetoric that the author argues is violence's precursor. Accountability and legitimate criticism are not the same as dignity-stripping cruelty, and the ability to distinguish between them is a measure of whether opposition to gender-based violence is principled or merely political.
South Africa cannot address femicide as a crisis of individual perpetrators while ignoring the institutional cultures that normalise the dehumanisation of women. The two are connected — not metaphorically, but causally. That is the uncomfortable argument this piece makes, and it is one that the country's corporate and political leadership would do well to sit with.
