Marchers call for action on rape scourge

SCORES of DA supporters picketed outside the SAPS Maupa Naga premises in Arcadia, Pretoria, yesterday, demanding tougher intervention on the rape of women and children.

Michele Clarke, the DA spokesperson on community safety in Gauteng, told reporters at the protest that police were ill-equipped to react to the scourge.

“We visit police stations throughout Gauteng, and at every station we’ve visited, they say they don’t have the resources to police crime actively like they should. Above that, I feel that their front desks (in police stations) are not trained to deal with these kinds of crimes when women arrive there after they have been raped,” said Clarke.

“Women have lost confidence in the police. The rape statistics in this province are a lot higher. Some women don’t report these crimes because they are not well treated when they arrive at the stations.”

Clarke said that for South Africa to turn the corner, in the wake of numerous reported cases of woman and child abuse, the SAPS had to adopt a new stance.

“The police have to change their attitude towards the way they deal with domestic violence. It is critical, and if we don’t do that, I can’t see us resolving what is happening in the country,” she said.

The DA said it would be taking its fight to the office of Gauteng Community Safety MEC Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane and SAPS provincial commissioner Lieutenant-General Deliwe de Lange.

The protest was also supported by members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community.

Guest speaker Lerato Phalakatshela, a hate-crime manager at OUT, a clinic for the LGBTI community in Pretoria, said his organisation had joined in the protests “to show police and everyone else that LGBTI people are people”.

“Women’s rights, and the rights of the LGBTI people, are very important and they need to be prioritised. We want the police to see us and to hear us,” said Phalakatshela.

DA MP Marius Redelinghuys said: “We are told that there is a Rapid Response Team. Where is that team when we know and we read that black lesbian women are being raped, and men who choose to express their true identity are being chased out of town, not before they are beaten to a pulp? When you go to the police there is no sensitivity.” – ANA

Police seen as ill-equipped, with bad attitude