Sexual offences task team established

A NEWLY established “cold case” task team had started “analysing” 785000 dockets relating to sexual offences in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa said yesterday.

“This is progress; it is almost like a laser beam type of focus on gender-based violence (GBV), and we are making sure that we are making resources available. Cogta has enrolled over 200000 women in a community works programme, representing 79% of the recruits, to do work on GBV,” he said.

Ramaphosa made the statement during an oral question and answer session in Parliament.

“We are making progress, and we are doing quite a lot,” Ramaphosa said in response to DA leader John Steenhuisen, who had accused him of talking about putting measures in place to lessen incidents of GBV, but not following through.

The president said the government was being strengthened by women’s groups in its efforts to tackle high GBV and femicide rates.

The council is yet to be established, but Ramaphosa said it would be “effective”.

“That council is not going to be a talk shop. It is going to be a council that will have a majority membership of civil society entities across the country, and they are going to be having hawks’ eyes on every effort that government needs to implement.”

Ramaphosa said more than 200 permanent social workers had been hired to attend to the “critical issue” of psychosocial support services for survivors of GBV and femicide.

Steenhuisen told Ramaphosa he made “endless commitments”.

“Mr President, you have on many occasions made a variety of commitments to deal decisively with GBV, yet the ANC’s actions, and on the ground, results show that GBV is clearly not a priority of this government.

“The crime stats released last week show very clearly that under your first term as president, the number of sexual offences and rape have increased.” |