How Music in Botswana Influence Gender Based Violence

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BOTSWANA MUSIC CONTRIBUTES TO GENDER BASED VIOLENCE The stereotypes portrayed in some of Botswana’s music is quite disturbing and to a certain extent contributes to gender based violence in Botswana. Gender based violence elucidated as the abuse directed to someone on the basis of their sex either verbal, sexual or physical. In this case some of Botswana traditional music like “Loso la monnamogolo” and “Makhirikhiri” both by Shumba Ratshega, we notice that the manner of which woman are delineated is harsh, disrespectful and degrading. Words used are to diminish the image of woman in society. In these songs women are depicted as sex addicts, prostitutes, gold diggers, liars and cheats. The study of the link between these kind of songs and the issue of gender based violence is to unravel the absurd idea that music like this has no effect in this issue. This essay is to show that indeed there is a connection between the two and to come up with measures to sensitize this issues and stop this behaviour. The song “Loso la monnamogolo” the artist uses subtly different literary devices to conceal the real meaning of what the artist intends to address, for instance when he says; “tota wa nkgwaetsa o gaisa ntatemogoloago” In this line he is saying the grandmother says the young man gives her good sex and is way better than the grandfather which depicts women as sex starved. The artist used the element of imagery to hide the real meaning of ‘kgweetsa’ which actually means having sex’. This contributes to gender based violence in the sense that when people listen to these songs they treat women as they are depicted in the song, they start to believe that indeed they are how they are described in these songs hence gender based violence occurring. The other song “Makhirikhiri” talks about women being cheats, liars has funny and tricky tendencies ;
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