Creating safe spaces: Men discuss mental health and GBV in community dialogue

The director of the Ayanda Ndamane Foundation said that he is emotional at how successful the first Thetha Ndoda (Men Speak Up) Empowerment and Healing Dialogue was, and how he is looking to continue fostering conversations between men. 

Ayanda Ndamane is a multi-award-winning photojournalist who is known for capturing vibrant news images and is changing the narrative and bringing a ‘men’s conference’ that is needed in all communities. 

Saturday’s dialogue in Khayelitsha sought to create a safe space for men to discuss mental health, fatherhood, life challenges, positive masculinity, accountability, financial pressures, and ending GBV to create a better society and build an environment beneficial for generations to come.

Ndamane said that while he has been working hard for the past three months to prepare the, he “didn't expect it to be so successful”. Speakers included some political officials, doctors, lawyers and social workers.

“I was emotional, but it was very successful. Initially, I wanted 100 men to attend, but yesterday, we ended up with about 150.”

Ndamane said that while it was a success, he is not fully satisfied, as the three hours they sat down for proved to be too little time to fully unpack all the topics that they had wanted to discuss.

“Three hours was not enough, but it was very good. Besides the speakers, who spoke very well, I needed more from the community, but because of the time constraints, we couldn't extend the time.

“Ultimately, the thing that helped us in that conversation yesterday was the first speaker, who is a well-known businessman, politician, very well-respected, and when he came up, you think, maybe it's gonna just be talking diplomatically about things, but he got vulnerable,” Ndamane said.

 “When he was speaking to us, he took the conversation to his personal life. This guy, even in stature, is big; he's tall, but when he was so emotional and talking about personal things that happened to him, and his family, I think that set the tone, because everyone in the hall was a bit emotional about it.”

Ndamane said that after that, men were willing to be more open and share their struggles. 

“I think it's very important for men to have safe spaces where they can honestly talk to each other. Honestly, say, I have challenges, I have stress or trauma, or I have mental/financial/sexual issues. How do I deal with this thing?

“For men, we always want to be strong. We always want to be seen as strong people, and yet, we are human beings - we have challenges.”

He said that they were able to shed light not only on gender-based violence, but also patriarchal and familial challenges. 

Ndamane said that one example was how dynamics between older and younger siblings would be used to pit them against each other and not treat them equally because of the status that comes with their jobs.

Next for Ndamane will be taking the Thetha Ndoda conversations to the youth, and then also having a conversation with women, all leading to a massive town hall by the end of the year. 

“We're going to schools, we're going to grade 10, 11 and 12 with the same concept of Tetha Ndoda. We want to speak to young boys at whatever schools we can reach, to speak about these problems we addressed yesterday, just to try and help where we can.

“At the end of the year, we want to have one big combined conference where we have men, we have women, we have youth, to say, we're here now in the same room,” Ndamane said.

“Now I'm thinking I'm not gonna stop. I don't care if out of 50 people I get 2 or 5. It doesn't matter. From now on, I want to make this my business to go and help young boys and help them make better choices in life.”

theolin.tembo@inl.co.za