Violence is woven into daily reality for many South Africans. The roots of this violence reach into complex spheres of historic oppression and ongoing inequalities – and addressing it today requires equally complex and multifaceted solutions. On top of the human and social costs of such violence, the economic consequences are also significant. Addressing violence in South Africa is necessary to improve our social future: but it has the potential to improve our economic future and development, too. Rolling out evidence-based intervention programmes that are cheap and easy to scale up is vital – and it starts with preventative programmes at an early childhood development level.

The World Population Review recently placed South Africa in the top ten countries for rates of murder, rape and robbery. It is the country with the fourth highest rate of rape in the world.

Aside from its devastating impacts on people, families and communities, such violence is costing the economy and fuller development of the country itself. According to recent research led by the University of Johannesburg, South Africa lost more than R36 billion in 2019 alone due to Gender Based Violence (GBV). This calculation was based on the country’s estimated 0.7% loss of GDP that year due to ‘GBV induced human capital loss’.

Addressing violence in South Africa requires a variety of strategies at different layers of our society and economy. Developing solutions, therefore, requires the involvement of different players. As there exists a ‘substantive gap’ in terms of multi-sectoral dialogue on violence, bodies like the Violence Prevention Forum (VPF) have been established to bring these players together.

This forum – which includes private sector members with a vested interest in reducing violence in South Africa – has a ‘long-term goal of advancing the scale-up of evidence-based approaches to prevent violence in South Africa.’ Programmes that address violence might be reactive (dealing with the consequences of violence) or preventative.

Violence prevention programmes need to be evidence-based (to make sure they actually work) and cheap to roll out on a large scale (to allow implementation in a context like South Africa’s).

Research has found that the point at which humans are most naturally aggressive is when they are just two years old. Furthermore, very young children with persistent and pervasive aggressive behaviour who have not followed a trajectory of emotional regulation to find adaptive ways to manage their aggressive impulses, account for over 50% of adolescent and adult violent crimes. It follows, then, that helping young children curb their natural aggression to reduce their risk of ongoing aggressive behaviour is critical to building a less violent future adult population.

Studies from more developed countries show that such early-childhood interventions pay off. A UK study found that there was a 16% drop in crime amongst the children who took part in an early childhood programme. This 16% drop saved the government double the amount of money it invested in the programme.

Dialogic book-sharing – an activity in which an adult and a child interact together over a wordless picture-book – has been shown to have several positive impacts on children and their relationships, and has the potential to decrease their likelihood of developing violent behaviour later in life.

By using specially-designed wordless picture-books that subtly address matters of gender and violence – and show relatable images of South African life – parents can start to build better futures for their children in their own homes.

These books are cheap to make and distribute, and training adults on book-sharing is easy to do. This makes it an affordable, evidenced-based intervention, which is certainly one way South Africa can start to address its worrying levels of violence.

Kaathima Ebrahim is the CEO of The Mikhulu Child Development Trust – a Cape Town-based NGO that provides book-sharing training programmes and develops its own wordless picture-books.

kaathima.ebrahim@mikhulutrust.org