LAST week I was a bit hesitant about going all out on my piece about domestic violence not only in America, but as a global problem.
So I took a more muted approach.
However, after receiving various messages and interacting with vana vekumusha, I have decided to go for it.
Over the past weeks, the issue of Ray Rice and his violent conduct to his then fiancé, Janay Palmer has stirred a lot of emotions and responses on how people should deal with the issue of domestic violence.
Janay Palmer, who is now married to Ray Rice and has a daughter with him has come out and strongly defended her husband, Ray Rice.
Not only has Janay defended Ray, she has said she takes responsibility for her part in the incident.
Of course, this has not gone down well with Women’s Rights Groups who are now calling her all sorts of names and labelling her a traitor to the cause.
A while ago I read a story about a well-to-do Zimbabwean man in South Africa who reportedly struck his wife with a dumbbell following an argument.
He then drove to the nearest police station where he handed himself over to the police saying he had killed his wife.
As a result of this incident, he was immediately suspended from his job and as usual in such situations he is ostracised from the community.
It later turned out that the wife was not seriously injured and the man most probably out of fear had assumed the worst.
However, the damage had already been done.
Zimbabwean families here and in Canada have been separated because of these cases of domestic violence.
The usual story is that the father fails to adapt to the new society and culture and ends up having to leave the family home or the children are placed in foster care.
Parents find it extremely difficult to discipline their children in a country where any physical approach is considered child abuse.
It is interesting to hear mothers and fathers lament how (911) yavaparira, because attempt to discipline Chipo or Tatenda is met with, “If you hit me I will call 911.”
I remember this one time I met a woman who used to threaten her children with taking them to Zimbabwe and beating the living daylights out of them once the plane landed at Harare International Airport.
Some Zimbabwean men feel emasculated by the new rules they have to abide by in these foreign lands.
The complaints range from, “mukadzi haachatongeka, tatofanana, iye akutozviona sekunge ndiye baba,” the reason being that in America, women have more legal rights than their men.
There seems to be a common feeling among men that Zimbabwean women have perfected the notion of egging them on whenever they have disagreements in the home.
I received messages from men who say, “Women do not fight fair, they will say unprintable things about your mother to win an argument.”
Others claim that women even go so far as to challenge them to beat them saying things like, “Ukasandirova urimbwa.”
Knowing vanaMuseyemwa such language leads to one reaction and that is a one way ticket to jail.
A lady sent me a rather long message claiming that there is a belief among African men that in order to show their dominance in the home they have to smack their partner around once in a while.
She says her husband of over 30 years was told by his sekuru when they got married that, “Muzukuru kuti mukadzi akuterere unofanira kumbopota uchimupa mambama apo neapo.”
According to her every time her husband felt he was losing control, had a bad day at work, or was depressed, guess who became the punching bag?
However, it is not just women who are on the receiving end of abuse in the home.
I think abuse in the home is more unbearable for men as it goes against what as Africans we expect to be taking place in a family.
The typical abuser is characterised as the man while the woman is more or less expected to be the victim.
A school friend of mine revealed to me that his boss does not wear short sleeved shirts because he has serious burn marks.
His wife poured boiling water on him while he was watching television and it has left him scarred for life.
I asked how they explained that at the hospital and he said that he did not go to the hospital because he was ashamed and also for fear of having his wife arrested.
In a way he was right.
It is shameful that as society, our first reaction to cases of abuse is to blame the victim or ridicule them.
When I asked a few of those I had been interacting with what they thought about this case, the women were quick to say, he probably had done something bad and his wife was just expressing her displeasure.
The men on the other hand wanted to hear how he disciplined the wife.
What I found interesting in all my interactions with my countrymen and women was that most believe that domestic violence has mostly to do with physical abuse.
I realised that for some, emotional abuse seems to be a concept for the whites. However, what I took from my interactions with vana vekumusha is that physical abuse happens under more than half of the Zimbabwean families here in America.
Coming back to Janay Rice, after what can only be termed a shocking act of violence, she not only went on to marry Ray, had a baby, but claims they are happy.
The Rices have moved on, and had TMZ not released the elevator video, their lives would be progressing smoothly.
So the question becomes, how is society supposed to react to domestic violence?
We have all these laws that are supposed to protect men, women, and children, but how are we to implement them when our minds are still bound by cultural mistruths and notions that endorse abusive behaviour.
Domestic violence is not an African creation as evidenced by global figures that have made the United Nations identify it as a growing social problem, but as Africans how do we fight such a problem when many of us continue to hold onto the idea that a slap, punch, pinch, here and there is acceptable?