Theatre of abuse: the Babes scandal reveals how we treat abused women

Every week is a painful week to be a woman in SA, but for many of us this past week will forever stand out when we think about the ways in which a woman can be publicly shamed, victimised and vilified.

Self-styled "gqom queen" Babes Wodumo certainly has received immense public support, but the musician born Bongekile Simelane has unwittingly also become the face of what abused women go through when they finally break their vow of silence.

Since a video of her abuse at the hands of her longtime boyfriend, musician Mampintsha (Mandla Maphumulo), was made public, the usual questions have surfaced: why didn't she leave sooner? What did she do to provoke him? Why did she record it? Why did she take so long to press charges?

But the issue with that narrative - and how we talk about abuse in general, when we talk about abuse at all - is that it focuses on the perceived lack of "appropriate" action from the victim rather than the actions of the abuser.

The woman who has taken the brave step of sharing her repeated private humiliation, injury to self and injury to her body with her community - or, in Babes's case, with millions of South Africans, some of whom hadn't even heard of her before - is now being deconstructed, torn apart and analysed.

She is being re-victimised, over and over.

It's something many women whose abuse has become public fodder - such as some of the endless rape survivors this country births every day - go through.

When the video of Babes being slapped around by Mampintsha - he of the performative press addresses, he with the moon boot as a prop during his first court appearance - surfaced, many high-profile figures were quick to tweet their outrage. But two thorny themes emerged in these tweets, especially those that came from men.

The first: they vehemently condemned abuse and gender-based violence - but few actually condemned Mampintsha. The second, equally alarming common thread: Babes must press charges.

Arts & culture minister Nathi Mthethwa tweeted: "We're absolutely horrified by the actions of musician Mapmpintsha [sic] caught on video where he brutally abuses internationally celebrated artist Babes Wodumo. We do not only condemn this senseless act but call on Babes Wodumo to immediately press charges against him."

Kudos to the minister for explicitly naming Mampintsha, but to "call on Babes Wodumo to immediately press charges" is to place her under unnecessary public pressure because, had she not then pressed charges, that would have cast the legitimacy of her story in doubt - even though the act was captured on video and circulated for millions of eyes to see.

Because if she really was abused, especially regularly, now was the chance for her to "prove" it's real by marching to the police station and performing her victimhood.

Pressing charges is often the sensible thing to do in instances of abuse and violence, but it isn't always the safest route and it certainly doesn't guarantee justice of any sort.

A female cop I know once told me the story of a woman who showed up at the police station where she worked, wanting to press charges of abuse against her husband. To paraphrase: "We asked her what happened - what did she do [to provoke him]? She told us her husband wanted sex, but that she didn't. He hit her. But we told her that her job as a woman is to satisfy her husband."

She laughed as she recounted what surely must have been a horrific experience for this woman who had sought refuge with the police - the people tasked with creating "a safe and secure environment for all people in SA".

And those are the police Babes, and many women like her, should put their trust in?

The Babes and Mampintsha situation has been dramatic, the kind of salacious story that gets clicks on websites and trends on Twitter. She has since had charges of assault filed against her, and her credibility as a victim now has a dark cloud looming over it.

Given her portrayed behaviour - hard drinking, heavy partying, aggressiveness, a potty mouth, all things a lady does not do - suddenly Babes doesn't fit the profile of an ideal victim.

Because, don't get it twisted, there are respectability politics that come with outing yourself as a victim of abuse.

We might not admit it, but we like our victims to look and act a particular way. We want them to fit the Law & Order profile of the abused woman. They must be afraid to make eye contact. They have to be unable to express themselves because their confidence has been so crushed it's turned to dust. They must be wearing a shabby cardigan and mismatched, knee-length skirt when they report their strife at the police station. They must look like the struggle they claim to be living through.

This narrative is one-dimensional and that's a problem, because abused women don't look, act or sound one way. They can be powerful, empowered, strong, rich, successful, bold, brilliant, brave, independent and opinionated. They often do fit some of these descriptions. But that shouldn't make them any less believable as - and this is the best-case scenario - abuse survivors.

And where is the perpetrator in all of this? Either relegated to the sidelines or re-imagined in the role of the "actual" victim. It's a play, and the understudy has now taken centre stage. This poor man has been misrepresented and had his reputation shattered by a scheming witch whose agenda is to destroy him. Enter Mampintsha, stage left.

A woman has to end up dead (shot in the head, buried in her lover's backyard, dismembered, burnt beyond recognition, hacked to pieces, beaten to death and all the other gory ways the men in our lives dispose of us) before we accept her as a victim of abuse.

Even better if she's pretty - because then her beautiful (and now gone) face can be splashed across front pages and flashed on TV screens during news bulletins.

Babes Wodumo disrupts the accepted narrative of what an abused woman looks like. She is not an "acceptable victim".

Though each abusive relationship is different in its details, one of the best portrayals of abuse shown on screen was in the award-winning US TV series Big Little Lies. Actress Nicole Kidman played a woman whose husband (Alexander Skarsgård) beat the living daylights out of her - but she gave back as good as she got. This was tennis, not squash. She was fierce, she was angry, she was passionate - but she was also a victim.

In a 2018 interview, American singer Kelis shared her experience of abuse at the hands of her now ex-husband, rapper Nas: "We had intense highs and we had intense lows ... Did he hit me? Mm-hmm. Did I hit back? Mm-hmm."

She also said: "We would have the worst night ever and we would wake up the next day, and it's like it never happened."

And that's the case in many abusive relationships - they're not as clear-cut as we would like them to be. Abuse is complex, abuse is messy. It's not simply a case of "he hits you, so you immediately pack your stuff and hightail it out of there". Abuse isn't just about the slaps, the kicks, having your spectacles broken, being pushed off the bed or being repeatedly and painfully slapped with a pillow across your face and then receiving a grand romantic gesture the next day. Abuse is a seed that's planted surreptitiously, watered and nurtured, until it grows into a sturdy and large tree difficult to chop down.

If abuse was as black and white as it's been portrayed by those who have never lived through it, the statistics wouldn't tell us there are three victims of femicide in SA each day. If abuse was simple, not a single woman would land up dead at the hands of a man who claims to love her.

And those women - dead physically and in other ways - wouldn't only be acknowledged, "supported" and remembered in the form of badly designed awareness posters, campaigns and speeches for two weeks every year.