Put a plan in place to stop rapes, domestic violence
WHY does rape and brutal sexual and domestic violence continue unabated in South Africa? Why is it on the rise, despite civic actions, calls and marches? Why? Because there’s no political will to end it.
Our Minister for Women in the Presidency is Bathabile Dlamini. The woman who lied, cheated and ravished her way through Social Development, was “rewarded” with a ministry that could address the scourge of rape and femicide (SA’s rate is 7 x the global average), but has done nothing whatsoever in the interest of women since her appointment almost a year ago.
Furthermore, our government spends next to NO money on Prevention and Response to Sexual-, Gender and Domestic Violence. The whole ministry has a laughably insufficient annual budget – all spent on salaries and admin. Likewise, our corporations refuse to wake up and include GBV Prevention in their CSI mandates, although it’s proven to cost 5% of the GDP. Our police force is too small, with too few stations, too few cops and detectives and most of our constables who receive victims in the stations are undertrained and uninformed, or even biased and re-victimise the plaintiffs.
Corruption allows thousands of files to go missing and investigations to be botched. Our Victim Charter is not adequately enforced.
Our courts further victimise victims and cases are drawn out over years, caused by poor court- and procedure management. A total of 60 000 reported cases (representing at least half a million cases) led to 4 000 guilty verdicts. Rape is practically an unpunished crime.
Patriarchy is embedded in society in all races, perpetuated by fathers and mothers raising boys and girls by different standards, celebrating boys as superior and girls as subservient. Many calls for action explicitly exclude men from solution-seeking and thus drive the genders even further apart. Toxic Masculinity meets Toxic Feminism in a brutal standoff while women, girls, boys and men are raped every day.
I’m an under-qualified charity worker and I can draw up an action plan to put an end to sexual violence through prevention and communitybased response. Why can’t our government with all the resources at their disposal? The only deduction is: They have it in their power, but they simply don’t want to: 40% of South African men admit to abuse of women in some form. Is that 40% in our government likely also hindering real action?
My friend Patrizia Benvenuti asked if people in South Africa got so used to brutality that they don’t realise how serious it is anymore.
My reply: I am sure they have. Our children see more brutality, violence and trauma in a year than children from other counties experience from 0-18 years. It’s become the norm and thus deemed normal. People grew up on violence and have no idea that it’s possible to have a society without it: communities where you can leave your doors open, walk in parks and leave your child in a play area in safety, where a 17-year-old is not raped in hospital a day after giving birth by someone posing as a doctor.
You don’t even have time to feel shock because the next thing you hear is that four men posing as policemen gang-raped a woman, 51, next to the road. You’re still thinking about that then you hear a child is raped in a steakhouse toilet!
These are the ones that make it to the news, because they are unusual. The hundreds of other women, boys, girls and men who were raped in that three-day period you don’t hear about, because the victims weren’t particularly pretty or famous; the rapes not particularly gruesome.
It breaks my heart and it makes me angry and frustrated. I have an amazing award-winning innovative initiative, but no money to take it to other neighbourhoods. People who earn a salary to work on solutions, take the salary gladly, but don’t work on solutions. We make plans to make plans, but people are only mildly interested in getting something done. Facebook Likes – that’s all we get plus angry or tearful emoticons and the odd comment before people move on.