Society also has role in fighting GBV, public protector tells pupils
Combating gender-based violence is not just up to law enforcement, but also society, public protector Kholeka Gcaleka said.
Delivering the annual Uyinene Mrwetyana lecture at Kingswood College in Makhanda yesterday, Gcaleka praised the Mrwetyana family, whom she said had chosen a healing path when dealing with the horrific rape and murder of Uyinene.
Uyinene, who matriculated from Kingswood College in 2018, became a national symbol of the fight against GBV and femicide.
The young activist was murdered in the Claremont post office in Cape Town in 2019.
Post office administrator Luyanda Botha, who lured her back to the post office to collect a parcel at a time when the office was closed for lunch, was sentenced to life for her rape and murder.
Both at Kingswood and at the University of Cape Town, Uyinene was an outspoken advocate for justice, particularly for women.
The family, led by its matriarch Noma Mrwetyana, established the Uyinene Mrwetyana Foundation to combat violence against women and children.
“You could have chosen to be angry and had a negative attitude to men,” Gcaleka said.
“But you chose the path of healing.
“Rape and murder of women and children is an extremely violent crime. “Society requires healing.” She said all the photos of Uyinene showed an open, tender, kind and happy person.
Botha had seen this as a weakness.
“I cannot imagine how anyone could have wanted to have been forceful and violent [to someone like Uyinene].
“It would have taken somebody badly pained and hurt with themselves.”
Gcaleka said she had spent 12 of her 20 years in law prosecuting GBV crimes and had sought to understand the minds of sexual offenders.
She said society continued to carry the scars caused by imbalances, segregation and atrocities before SA became a democracy.
Families had then been separated by apartheid.
Today, families remained divided by the need to work to earn a better life and spent too little time with their children.
The constitutionally enshrined rights to life, freedom and dignity which had been so easily stripped from Uyinene could not be fully realised without the right to equality.
There could be no right to equality unless all children were “free to walk the streets, to have a safe home in safe surroundings and to be able enjoy their innocence”.
It started with the family, which had to create balance for children.
“Balance is important. “We don’t want to raise isolated boys or over-masculine girls because of our scars.
“This will create a different anger in the next generation and it is not anger we want to see.
“We want to create equality and equity between girls and boys.”
She pointed out that women, like men, also had violent streaks.
“We [women] are also perpetrators.
“But because of society, men do not report it.
“We [women] are better off because we can easily report it.”
She urged Kingswood pupils to find their platform and use the power it gave them to transform society and the way
Uyinene people’thought. s ordeal had touched the world and the foundation established in her name sought to build a different legacy.
“It is up to us to support that legacy and build ethical human beings.”
Uyinene’s mother, Noma, said it had been five years since her daughter’s death.
“It still feels like yesterday. “But we continue to rise. “We continue to remember her and uphold the legacy of Uyi-Uyi.”