Gender-based Violence against Men through the lens of Molefe’s Ke Nako ya ka

Gender-based Violence (GBV) is a vexing malady that marginalises the social development sphere of the entire globe. It has become an overriding global concern, with many reports suggesting that women are extremely victimised agents. Consequently, this has engendered robust scholarly attention on issues of violence against women whilst also occasioning a gap in the GBV discourse by virtue of affording little attention to the other gender, men’s issues concerning violence. This noted, whereas the paper states that GBV against women is a global pandemic that menaces human life, it aims to point out the missing link in the GBV engagements and bring to the limelight the seemingly muted cry of men. This study utilised qualitative and textual analysis methods to investigate the extent to which men are also victimised by GBV through the lens of a literary text that mirrors the struggles of men in silence. Molefe’s novel, Ke nako ya ka, is found to be germane to the focal theme of the study and has been utilised to advance the paper’s argument about the forsaking of men in the discussions of GBV. The study’s findings, inter alia, unveil that the institutionalised traditional perceptions of femininity and masculinity subject men to a fallacious immunity against GBV as they are culturally perceived as stronger vessels and women as weaker ones. The study makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing discourse on the pretexts of GBV-related issues in society. Keywords: Culture, Gender-based Violence (GBV), Menfolk, Tradition, Womenfolk