The Contributing Factors to Gender-Based Violence in South Africa: The Nexus between Ubuntu and Adult Education

Abstract

This article highlights that in addition to the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty, and inequality, the scourge of gender-based violence has become the most pressing challenge currently facing South Africa. Apart from being described by the World Bank as the most unequal society in the world with the highest unemployment rate and deteriorating poverty levels, South Africa has been dubbed the “rape capital of the world” by Human Rights Watch. In this regard, the article primarily focuses on the prevalence of gender-based violence directed at women by their male counterparts in South Africa. This article argues that like the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty, and inequality, the challenge of gender-based violence in South Africa has its roots in the country’s history of apartheid. The paper utilises the lens of Ubuntu philosophy as an analytical framework to interrogate the phenomenon under study. Using Lacey George’s classifications of the causes of gender-based violence in South Africa, this paper discusses the contributing factors to gender-based violence in the country. The article is conceptual and relies entirely on secondary data sources for its compilation. The article theorises that adult education combined with principles of Ubuntu philosophy could help promote tolerance, understanding, and co-existence between males and females in South Africa thus reducing the scourge of gender-based violence in the country.