Women’s march turns nasty
SCUFFLE: PROTESTERS, COPS CLASH
Rorisang Kgosana and Chisom Jenniffer Okoye
housands of angry women and victims of abuse were involved in a scuffle with police when they tried to push their way through the Union Buildings gates to see President Cyril Ramaphosa during the national #TotalShutDown march yesterday.
The women rejected two male government officials and Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor, who met the women to receive their memorandum.
The disgruntled women refused to leave until Ramaphosa faced them, forcing police to resort to pepper spray to disperse the crowd.
Placards that read “We are not ovary-acting” and “non-consensual sex is rape – I can’t say yes or no when I’m drunk” were paraded in the air while some brave women used their bare chests to send their message.
“The broader picture is the patriarchal violence in South Africa that continues to reign. We see it year after year and we are sick and tired. We are ordinary women of South Africa putting ourselves on the line to say we are going to stand and say no to that,” said one of the organisers, Gaopalelwe Phalaetsile.
Shops across the Pretoria CBD shut their doors when the thousands of women descended down the busy Francis Baard Street, chanting “No is no!”.
The national march also included gender non-conforming people who were often abused for their sexuality.
Lerato Dumse, a lesbian from Kwa-Thema, said she was living in fear due to the “traumatic” killings of lesbian women.
“The reality is it can happen to us. We are living in fear and not comfortable. Being told by police to stay at home at night is really not a solution. We want a country where we are free to walk at 3am,” she told The Citizen.
Meanwhile, the ANC Women’s League said their nationwide march against gender-based violence had turned out “better than expected”.
The main march kicked off at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg where marchers, including Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini, started marching to Luthuli House to hand over a memorandum to ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule.
Among their demands were that government would allow for gender budgeting, urgently establish a presidential working group on women’s issues, the establishment of a gender based violence council, and the banning of artists found guilty of gender-based violence from performing at ANC events.
They gave the ANC a seven-day deadline to make public how it has dealt with perpertrators of gender-based violence within its own ranks. –