Kgosi Tswebebe Segotsi, senior subordinate tribal authority, said corporal punishment legislation in the country is suspect as the architects of the legislation appear to have targeted men whilst their female counterparts are treated with ‘kid’s gloves’.
Segotsi blew the trumpet this week at the Mahalapye kgotla meeting organized by the district police personnel. He said the legislation is unfair and discriminatory as it favours women at the expense of men.
Segotsi revealed that men are subjected to strokes on the bum as translated by law whilst their co-accused in the opposite sex received less severe sentences.
This, according to Segotsi, is despite having committed the same offence that guarantees the same penalty.
“Wayward young men’s bums are almost in tatters as, time and again, they are subjected to the punishment whilst their co-accused of the opposite sex received less stringent sentences.”
Such imbalance, Segotsi said, renders their decisions questionable. The tribal leader is more perturbed by the male Zimbabwean illegal immigrants whom he said frequent his kgotla quite often for having entered the country at ungazetted points.
He said Zimbabwean males bear the brunt in strokes on the bum while ‘their’ women are either fined or their sentences suspended.
This anomaly, said the tribal leader, should be rectified as “no sooner had they been deported back to their country than they re-appear at his kgotla for the same offence.”
He complained that despite fines and sentences imposed upon them, Zimbabwean women never complied with the sentence.
He pleaded with the government through police personnel to look into the matter.
On stray animals roaming the roads and the villages, he requested the government to enact a law that would permit individuals to ‘use a pistol’.
His assistant, Kgosi Johannes Maherero, complained about young women who stroll the village ‘only partly dressed’.
Maherero said that the young women “even seek assistance at our kgotla with breasts and pubic hair partly exposed”. Such fashion, he said, should be met with the strongest criticism it deserves as it encourages offences such as rape.
Responding to the concerns raised, the Officer Commanding No 2 District, Boikhutso Dintwe, told the gathering that the Zimbabwean issue was a political matter as is the corporal punishment meted out to men only.
