Women in the public sector
Nomathemba Malvern helps ensure that victims of gender-based violence receive all the help and support they need
After realising that people often feel more at ease talking about painful situations in a non-face-to-face setting, the Department of Social Development opened the Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Command Centre.
The command centre opened its doors in November 2013 and operates 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, as a national call centre facility that helps those who are affected by GBV.
In an interview with PSM, command centre manager Nomathemba Malvern said a group of professional social workers was hired and trained to assist callers in need of psychosocial support services and more.
The command centre provides immediate counselling and trauma debriefing telephonically, among other services.
“We do not offer face-to-face counselling services,” she added.
Encouraging victims to open up
Having worked as a social worker for approximately 30 years, Malvern said her experience has taught her that sometimes people talk more freely about their situations when they are not in a faceto-face setting.
“When they have to talk face-toface, they have elements of fear, embarrassment and self-blame,
whereas they are freer over the phone and are able to open up,” she explained, adding that this is what motivated the department to start the initiative.
“In most cases, when dealing with victims of gender-based violence, you find that they keep quiet about their suffering.The thought behind the command centre was that people would find it a bit easier to phone in, rather than to have a face-to-face intervention with a social worker,” Malvern added.
For most of her career, Malvern has worked for the Department of Social Development.
She also worked for Johannesburg Child Welfare, a non-profit organisation that provides a range of direct services to abused, abandoned, neglected, orphaned and vulnerable children, as well as the Wits Council of Churches.
Her main role as command centre manager is to monitor the overall work done at the centre to ensure that it runs smoothly and to ensure that the supervisors are doing what they are expected to do.
Social workers at the centre work on 12-hour rotational shifts, with 12 social workers and two supervisors working per shift.
Since 2013, the centre has received 306 714 calls and
103 731 ‘please call me' messages. Between 2016 and 2018, it received 2 014 SMS texts.
Reaching out to all in need
Malvern said it is not only women who call to ask for help.
“Since last year, we have noticed that men are also starting to ask for help, and this includes both victims and perpetrators. The most unfortunate part of it is that sometimes youth call the centre and prank us.This is unfortunate because we have to take every case seriously to determine if help is needed,” she added.
Malvern noted that men are still scared of speaking out about being abused because of how society looks at and treats them when they report such cases.
The command centre does not discriminate; all callers are welcome, whether male or female, or part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, intersex and queer/questioning (LGBTIQ) community.
According to Malvern, there have been instances where men who are perpetrators have called to ask for help because they realised that they had a problem.
She said the centre has a good relationship with organisations such as the Thuthuzela Care Centres, Brothers for Life, Sonke Gender Justice and many others which deal with cases of GBV.
With the recent spate of violence against women and children in the country, more people have come forward to ask for help from the centre.
Over and above cases of GBV, the centre has recently found itself dealing with cases that are not related to GBV, and this has led to more than 1 500 calls being attended to per week.
Common cases that the centre deals with include domestic violence, rape, child abuse, child neglect, sexual harassment, forced marriages, children abandonment, forced prostitution and abortion, human trafficking, exploitation of domestic workers, abuse of the elderly, incest, xenophobic attacks and LGBTIQ-related issues.
Referrals to other sources of support
She said when the centre receives non-GBV calls, it does what it can to help the caller or to refer the caller to the appropriate organisation.
“We are social workers. We can never turn our backs on anyone who needs help because sometimes people just need information and not necessarily counselling services,” she explained.
Malvern said victims can receive up to three sessions each. After that they are referred to a local social worker in their area, wherever that may be in South Africa.
She said the centre works very closely with victim empowerment coordinators who are based in
all provinces and have a better understanding of which social workers are close to the victims.
In cases of emergency where the caller is not safe and is desperate for help, she said the centre connects them to a police station through 10111 or directly to the nearest police station.
“All calls are geo-located so as soon as a person calls, we are able to see their exact location and thus locate the nearest police station,” she said.
“We have given ourselves a timeframe of 30 minutes to check progress after linking victims to police stations.Then we first call the victim to check if they have received the necessary attention from the police, and then we call the police station to check if a vehicle has been released to go help the victim,” she said.
The command centre also calls the victim later on to find out if they still need help or if they were satisfied with the help they received from both social workers and the police.
Malvern said social workers at the centre are also able to make referrals for further interaction and intervention and to refer victims to places of safety and shelters if necessary.This is done to help victims avoid additional exposure to violence.
Through her experience as a social worker and a qualified psychologist, Malvern said she has realised that most victims of abuse, especially domestic violence, endure the pain of being abused because they are somehow dependent on the perpetrator.
However, as much as social workers are there to provide help and support to victims, Malvern said it is not for them to decide whether the victim should leave an abusive relationship or stay.
“Through the counselling sessions and conversations that we have with the victims, they get a lightbulb moment and decide for themselves what to do about their future,” she explained.
Malvern added it is easy for people to confuse GBV with domestic violence.
“Most of the cases that we deal with are of domestic violence and these are cases of violence and abuse within the family unit, whereas GBV involves men and women, in which the female is usually the target, and is derived from unequal power relationships between men and women,” she explained.
Fighting a national problem
One of the centre's success stories relates to helping a victim who is living with a disability and was raped by her neighbour a couple of years ago.
“We referred her case to a social worker in her area, who contacted the police. Soon the neighbour was exposed and arrested. He is in jail as we speak,” she said.
With 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children around the corner, Malvern shared her message with all South Africans regarding the scourge of GBV in the country.
“Let us not treat GBV as something that is remote. It is there, it is real and it is happening. It is up to us to help decrease the number of incidents in our communities. We need to work together as different members of society to fight this scourge because it is a national problem. We must join hands if we are to see any change regarding this problem,” she said.
Malvern added that the centre also assists with enquiries about South Africa Social Security Agency grants and substance abuse, which often leads to violence.