"No sex without a fight": the country where 48 women are raped every hour

Moises Bagwiza, a citizen of the Republic of Congo, is a reflection of his past.

And his stories about how he treated and raped his wife, Jullienne, are sincere, graphic and disturbing.

In a modest bungalow in the peaceful village of Rutshuru, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Bagwiza remembers a particular attack while his wife was four months pregnant.

"I turned around and kicked her in the stomach," she said, describing that she had fallen to the ground and that she was bleeding. Worried neighbors quickly took her to the hospital.

His crime? Jullienne secretly saved money for household expenses through a local women 's organization.

Before the attack, she had refused to give her husband money for a pair of shoes.

"It's true, the money was his," says Moises Bagwiza. "But as you know, nowadays, when women have money, they feel powerful and they show it."

The traditional ideals of manhood

This resentment is at the heart of what some people call a crisis of modern African masculinity.

For centuries, men have been educated with clearly defined ideas about what it means to be a man: strength, emotional indifference, protection and being the provider of their family.

But changing gender roles, including greater empowerment of women, coupled with high unemployment among men, impede men's ability to adhere to traditional ideals of manhood.

And for some men like Bagwiza, a woman who has financial independence represents an existential threat that leads to the crisis.

He felt that violence was the only way to communicate with his wife.

"I thought it belonged to me," he says. "I thought I could do what I wanted with her, when I got home and that she asked me something, I hit her."

Compensation for male "failure"

The case of Bagwiza is far from unique.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has one of the highest rape rates in the world and about 48 women are raped every hour, according to a study by the American Journal of Public Health.

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Many experts attribute the rape crisis in the country to a long-standing conflict in the east, where rival militias routinely used rape and badual slavery as a weapon of war.

But the main cause of rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo is much deeper, according to Ilot Alphonse, co-founder of the NGO "Network of Men of Congo" (Red de Hombres del Congo), based in Goma, near Rutshuru .

"When we talk about badual violence only in the context of an armed conflict, we are a bit lost," he said.

"He hits me, locks me up, breaks my phone"

"We inherited this way of treating girls as subjects, men think that they have the right to have bad at all times, the cause of badual violence lies in the power and the position that Congolese men have always wanted to maintain. "

Danielle Hoffmeester of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) in South Africa agrees.

She believes that gender violence is directly related to the way men have been socialized since childhood and their inability to conform to the strict rules of traditional African masculinity.

"Providing is very important in adulthood and the inability of men to support their families has led many of them to compensate for this" failure "in a way that is often toxic and violent", did he declare.

Involve women in discussions

Ilot Alphonse claims to have been both author and victim of acts of violence.

"At school, they beat us, at home, they beat us and in the city, we organized combat sessions," he describes.

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Alphonse points out that he internalized the violence that later became a means of communication.

"Sometimes I hit my girlfriend and it was for her to apologize.I remember one day when we were still kids, I quarreled with my sister and I threw her a knife."

The anti-rape initiatives that attempted to combat rape in Africa have generally focused on women, who make up the majority of victims, and men have been excluded because they are often the perpetrators.

But for Alphonse, these initiatives concern the symptoms rather than the root causes of badual violence.

"We are fighting against gender-based violence," he said.

"We need to involve the men and boys who are part of the problem, so that they have a space to change things because they have an influence in the community."

And that's exactly what Alphonse and his colleagues are doing.

They created the Baraza Badilika, a contemporary version of ancient meeting spaces where men came together to solve the problems of the community and introduce children to manhood.

According to Alphonse, with the successive conflicts that have devastated villages and destroyed lives, these spaces have almost been eradicated, which has resulted in a lack of male role models for young men.

While the traditional Baraza Badilika (which in Spanish means something like the Circle of Change) was reserved for men, this new meeting of the 21st century gives women a prominent role.

"It's really time for women to invade these spaces," said Alphonse.

"Husbands change"

Every week, about 20 men gather in Baraza for two hours to learn about positive masculinity, gender equality and fatherhood.

The workshops are supervised by a facilitator and a facilitator, who use films, picture books and psychodrama sessions to "reconfigure the brain" of those who practice badual violence.

Alphonse says that most women tell her that their husbands have changed after attending workshops.

"They say," We went to the Imam, to the pastors, to the traditional chiefs, but he did not change, he was arrested many times, but he did not change … Suddenly, I find that it's not violent and that it's coming back to the hour. "

Bagwiza has also come a long way since hitting his pregnant wife.

"Of course, it is not (a change) at 100%, we are human, but a lot of things have improved dramatically, now we have conversations and our bad has improved a lot."

Alphonse is determined to reach "all men" in the Democratic Republic of Congo with his philosophy of positive masculinity.

"We dream of seeing the end of all forms of violence in this country, so that we can build a society for men, women, boys and girls," he said.

* This article is part of the BBC Africa Eye series on masculinity in modern Africa. For more information, visit BBC Africa's YouTube page.

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