GBV reality: women are on their own

Social activist Steve Letsike aptly captures the attitudes of many South Africans to our criminal justice system and its purported fight against gender-based violence.

“People withdraw because of mistrust in the system. People withdraw because of the pressure they feel from perpetrators. But ultimately people withdraw because the system has not been reliable. Think about it for a second.

Many women and children in particular, who fall victim to heinous crimes committed against them precisely because of their gender or age, ultimately abandon their quest for justice because they do not believe authorities either care enough or are able to deliver such justice. It’s a sobering reality that demands that we as a nation do a lot more than to pay lip service to the crisis that confronts us.

Letsike was speaking on the sidelines of the Presidential Summit on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide held in Midrand, Gauteng, in the past two days.

Understandably, the meeting was heated as survivors and activists demanded that President Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet account for what government is doing, systemically, to either protect women and children from this violence or to ensure perpetrators are held to account.

But the reality is that the needle has not moved much and where it has, there have not been tangible results to which we can point as a direct consequence of government’s interventions. Where there have been some interventions, the scale has been so miniscule that it does not change the broader public sentiments of hopelessness nor does it instil confidence in our criminal justice system.

For example, in the past two days it became patently clear how the structure and spending of the funds allocated to fight against GBV is disproportionate to the most basic needs of victim support organisations at community level. This means that while policymakers at the top would have us believe that government takes seriously its responsibility to intervene, the reality is that such interventions do not translate to meaningful change in the lives of survivors.

And this is precisely the problem – the disconnect between the said aspirations of the government and the lived experiences of ordinary people which confirm that ultimately, we are on our own.