The country is putting more effort each year into combating gender-based violence (GBV) by introducing various approaches to arrest the issue. However, it is sad to learn that addressing GBV is made difficult by numerous men who have a resistant mentality, which is extremely weakening the effectiveness of the approaches needed to end GBV. Currently, the issue on the table of numerous men is resistance to change, and that is one of the factors that is fuelling GBV cases in the motherland. Most of these men with resistant mentality merely believe in their own actions, be they good or wrong, which qualified the situation to be a worrisome trend. Resistant men respond to intimate relationship breakups with threats, and they see no need to seek support that will calm them down. Men with such a mentality are finding it extremely difficult to let go of their intimate partners who are no longer interested in them. However, their resistant mentality switches their common sense off and eventually commit GBV. One may say GBV awareness campaigns are ineffective, which is not true, because a lot has been done, and the majority of men are aware of the consequences of committing GBV, but the issue is that they fear breakups and become seriously dangerous when they are cheated on by their partners, even if they are practising it. 

Denial is also affecting men who are believed to have multiple partners unbothered. However, if one of their partners in their cycle gets tired and ends the relationship, such a man can easily turn himself into a murderer. Is that obsession or madness? One may also wonder if resistant men are aware that their partners are other men’s ex-partners. So, if they are aware, why did their ex-partner(s) not commit the same crime? Are those men more superior than others to commit such a satanic act? Other men had accepted the breakup pain and eventually normalised living their lives seeing their ex-partners in the hands of their successors, a beautiful trend that every man should normalise or inherit from others to collectively end GBV. Resistance reduces men’s ability to provide room for disappointments to accommodate break-up pains and cheating pains. A resistant mentality among men has boosted their confidence to justify violence in the name of girlfriend allowances and other material things they offer to their partners. After their denial colonised their minds, they commit GBV, and the outcome is arrest and imprisonment, as well as other negative consequences that affect their immediate families. It is very sad to learn that resistant men see no future after breaking up; they see no purpose in living, they have no mercy, and they see darkness and hopelessness. 

It is the same resistant traits that prevent them from detecting red flags in their intimate relationships and cannot fix issues amicably or find the courage to exit. 

These are the same men who hate positive masculinity discussions with fellow men who went through similar breaking-up pains but graduated peacefully without committing violence toward their previous partners. Resistance makes men forget that not all intimate partners are interested in being in a relationship for too long, though there are benefits/material things that are freely offered to them. Continuous resistance behaviours among men are not only stressing GBV programme implementers, but they are also creating an unsafe environment for most women in the so-called ‘serious relationships’ as their freedom to escape from toxic relationships may be accompanied by life-threatening acts from their partners.

Therefore, solidifying public institution-private institution-NGOs and household engagement on this issue can assist in diminishing the spread of GBV cases from generation to generation. It is worth noting that these resistance behaviours among men cannot be solved by a sole ministry, entity, or individual, but it requires an honest stakeholder approach to collectively sensitise men to face reality without resorting to GBV, and by doing so, it will create a safe and lovely environment for both men and women in our society. It is also important for the government and its stakeholders to go deep in their coffers to prioritise funding GBV organisations in both rural and urban areas to strengthen its position and actions against GBV. In the end, it’s of utmost importance to integrate sport in GBV programmes as a tool to reach out to most men.

*Tobias Nanhinda is a librarian at the ministry of gender. The views in this article are merely his and not of his employer.