The forgotten policy meant to curb abuse
A POLICY meant to assist women when reporting domestic abuse, commissioned three years ago, is gathering dust in the police minister’s office.
Between August 2014 and March 2015, the Civilian Secretariat for Police had consultations in the provinces with government departments and civil society organisations.
The policy was drawn up from those engagements.
Lisa Vetten, a gender activist and researcher who was part of the team who worked on the policy, said this week she wondered if any lives could have been saved in the past two years had the guidelines been rolled out at police stations.
“The policy had a whole section on statistics. It has never been made public or released,” said Vetten. “The policy was meant to address some of the issues on reporting the crimes [and] how officers are supposed to assist, but clearly it has not been put into effect.”
Vetten believes that, without credible statistics on femicide and domestic violence, it is difficult for the public to understand the problem around violence against women and children.
Police Minister Fikile Mbalula’s spokesman, Vuyo Mhaga, agreed, saying the policy set out training required to ensure officers, volunteers and anyone else dealing with victims were able to provide assistance to victims. He did not explain why the policy had not yet been implemented.
President Jacob Zuma has expressed outrage at the rape and murder of a three-year-old girl in Cape Town. Chris Barron asked a specialist on gender violence, Lisa Vetten . . . Zuma wrong saysin our something country. has What’s gone your response? If he’s asking what has gone wrong, in some respects he is one of his own best answers to the question. He’s Most part definitely.of the The problem? quality of governmentdeclined significantly.under his leadership has But predatesthe crisishis presidency,of gender violencedoesn’t it? It does, but there is a sense that one is losing some headway here. That gains that had been made are in some ways being rolled back. The quality of what one was doing is not what it used to be. So There we’veis that gone sense. backwards? Is that sense supported by the stats? This is the other problem we have. The quality of our administrative data is poor. Why? This is a broader problem across government. There is an overemphasis on numbers at the expense of quality, and without asking what the numbers mean. How important are quality stats in the fight against gender violence? Crucial. Because you can then decide where you need to allocate services, where you need to make more services available, how many shelters you should have. You can look at them to see if our interventions are having any kind of effect. Are we seeing a change in the nature of rape, which would mean having to try different strategies. So they should be telling you much more than just that the situation is getting better or worse? Yes, absolutely. And when you use stats purely to say we’re winning or we’re losing, you actually introduce perverse incentives into the system. Because nobody in government, especially if their performance bonus depends on it, wants to be seen as losing and not meeting their targets. So you then introduce perverse incentives to do things which are not very smart but which enable you to meet your target. How do we change this? We need to change the way we measure performance in government. The police, for example. Their measurement is on how much they reduce the reporting of rape and domestic violence. This ignores the fact that rape and domestic violence are significantly under-reported. So rather than measuring them by how much they can stop women from reporting, we should be measuring them on by what extent they reduce the barriers to reporting. Has reporting rape or gender abuse become any easier? No, not really. One has been making this argument to the police since 2004, but there has been no shift. Again suggesting that these problems predate Zuma? Yes, they do. But you can intensify and deepen pre-existing problems. In relation to services, things have become worse. So getting rid of Zuma would solve the crisis? No, the problem goes much deeper than that. Is it a ruling-party culture, then, that prevents us from tackling the crisis? That’s difficult to say, because the ANC has become such a fractured body. There are people in the ANC who do take the issue seriously. Four years ago, amid outrage about the rape and murder of Anene Booysen, the ANC Women’s League announced that they were going to call for a commission of inquiry into gender-based violence. Did that ever happen? No. Any idea why not? This is where you really do wonder what has got worse. Because what also happened at that time was that the Department of Social Development put together this integrated programme of action addressing violence against women. There was no consultation, it was never released and never implemented. What does the fact that someone like Bathabile Dlamini is in charge of both the ANCWL and Department of Social Development say about the ANC’s attitude to gender violence? I’m not convinced that opposition parties have demonstrated a strong commitment to gender equality. But they’re not in government, are they? My concern is that should the ANC government be replaced, we are not guaranteed that we’ll get a more brilliant understanding of gender equality. Until then, are you concerned that presidential candidate Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma hasn’t said a word about where she stands on the issue? What worries me about her is that in 2004 she overturned the suspension of [diplomat] Norman Mashabane, who was found guilty of 19 different charges of sexual harassment. She overturned that. That’s a concern. Is it a concern that gender violence has never been an electoral issue in this country? Yes, but here you have to look at party policy. And party policy in the last two elections — and this goes for the other parties as well — has been extremely insipid. The opposition doesn’t offer any better analysis or understanding or commitment. Given the scale of the crisis, why are they allowed to get away with this? Here you see a challenge to civil society around making this much more of an issue.