Time to stop paying lip service to violence

STAFF REPORTER

CIVIL rights groups are this Women’s Month urging government to do more than just announce catchy slogans and hold summits as they seek to protect women in South Africa.

This comes as recent, harrowing statistics revealed that three women were dying daily at the hands of their romantic partners in South Africa.

The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation found that South Africa had the world’s highest rate of rape as it was estimated that there were 138 rapes per 100000 women in 2017.

Dr Nthabiseng Moleko, a development economist at the University of Stellenbosch Business School and contributor to the 2019 South African Board for People Practices Women’s Report, themed “Women and Politics”, which was launched this week, insisted that more needed to be done to protect women in the country.

The report, which focuses on the life and work of women in South Africa, was compiled through a collaboration by the University of Stellenbosch Business School and the University of Johannesburg.

Moleko said while the budget speech mentioned a national strategic plan to “stop the carnage” by next month and welcomed the move to activate “budget support and planning for interventions” addressing Gender-based Violence (GBV) and femicide, there was a risk of failure unless mechanisms to track the true extent of the problem and the effectiveness of the strategies were in place.

“It is not clear how an effective strategy will be developed in the absence of indices and data to contribute to a national monitoring framework with performance indicators to monitor trends, incidence of GBV and measure the impact of interventions,” she said.

Moleko, who is also a commissioner at the Commission for Gender Equality believes that it would be more effective to deploy already existing resources in a more co-ordinated and monitored manner than to create new and overlapping institutions in regards to femicide.

She added that the fight against GBV should be taken up by people from all walks of life as it “affects the very fabric of our society”.

“It is of utmost importance that we establish both policy and institutional responses to measure and effectively reduce the incidence of GBV. It is not simply a phenomenon that occurs at home, it leaves traces across society and costs the nation dearly through a loss of productivity, a rise in absenteeism, and social grant dependence.

“Further reliance on the state for healthcare support, policing and judicial resources, social protection, and insurance places greater demands on already limited state resources.

“The loss suffered by individual women and children is immeasurable, and not something anyone should be forced to suffer in a civilised society,” Moleko said.

She said violence against women and children had heightened over the past decade, with the country’s femicide rate now five times higher than the global average, and more than one in five women experiencing physical violence, worsening to one in three in low-income areas.

“The statistics point towards a government and society crippled by an inability to protect women and children.”

“We clearly need to develop more than just reactive slogans and media responses to the incidence of such systemic violations and tragedies.

“The emphasis should rather be on monitoring the effectiveness and impact of interventions,” Moleko said.