Women’s safe houses filled beyond capacity
Broken, cream-coloured tiles form a mosaic of a woman ’ s face in the entrance hall of a shelter for abused women. Branches extending from her head are painted across the wall, decorated with colourful leaves.
“The face represents the broken women who arrive here”, says the director of the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children, Bernadine Bachar.
“The branches show the healing, growth and final empowerment they experience through programmes we offer.”
The centre in Athlone, on the outskirts of Cape Town, is a 24hour safe house for women and children who have been victims of abuse. The shelter can take up to 120 women at a time with their children and they are usually at full capacity.
SA has been hit by protests against femicide over the past few weeks after a series of murders that shocked the public. Among them was a student from Cape Town who was raped and killed in a post office.
Women’s minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said more than 30 women were killed by their spouses in August.
The hash tag #AmINext has been trending, with protesters demanding immediate action from the government. Some have called for the return of the death penalty and for a state of emergency to be declared.
On Wednesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced an emergency plan to stop the resurgence of violence against women. During an emergency sitting in the National Assembly, he said SA was one of “the most unsafe places in the world to be a woman”.
The Western Cape Women’s Shelter Movement protested outside parliament during the talks, demanding it consider the significant role played by safe houses for women and children.
Bachar says urgent action is needed. “We’ve absolutely seen an increase in gender-based violence over the past three months,” she says. “Not only has the number of women [affected] increased but they’re suffering from more intensive injuries than they used to before.”
According to Bachar, they are seeing a lot more burn victims, particularly from boiling water thrown at the face, and an increase in stab victims.
She blames this on a lack of government intervention, high levels of substance abuse and an unprecedented increase in unemployment rates that result in “a lack of power and control, which drives genderbased violence”.
Bachar also accuses SA Police Service officers of not taking the victims seriously and says they need to undergo special training to equip them with the necessary skills to deal with cases of sexist violence.
One abuse survivor, Rachel Petersen, recounted a bitter experience with the authorities.
“I went to the police, and I was dripping with blood, but they still wouldn’t help me. They said they don’t get involved in ‘house issues’,” Petersen says.
The 44-year-old, who currently lives and works at the abused women centre, blames a lack of education and awareness for the problem.
“I was always taught by my grandmother that as a wife, it is my job to be submissive. Before I came to this centre, I didn’t even know what abuse meant,” Petersen said.
The centre receives funding from the department of social development, but Bachar says that only covers 40% of the annual cost of running the shelter. It needs a further R6m, but raising that amount is “impossible”, Bachar says.
“Increased funding would mean we could uniformly extend our services to more survivors.”