Unite to make SA a safer place for women and girls
The 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children runs from November 25 until December 10 to reinforce the call for the prevention and elimination of violence.
The theme for this year’s campaign is “UNITE! Activism to end violence against women and girls.” Related to this theme is the UN secretary-general’s UNiTE by 2030 to End Violence against Women campaign (UNiTE).
The SA government says “the 16 Days campaign forms the centre point of [its] comprehensive 365 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children”, and forms part of a so-called emergency response to the scourge of gender-based violence in SA.
It is clear that violence continues unabated, not only in SA but worldwide. In SA, between
October and December of 2021, a total of 11,315 people, primarily women and girls, were raped, according to police statistics. However, according to the Rape Survivor’s Justice Campaign, only 7.7% of sexual offences are reported, thus putting the actual number of sexual offence cases at an estimated 645,580 a year. In addition, there are an average of 2,763 murders of women in SA a year, about seven per day. This places SA in the top five countries in the world regarding femicide.
GBV, particularly sexual violence, is used as a means of social control: to control the movement and behaviour of women, as well as to uphold patriarchal and hetero-normative norms and ideologies.
This social control is rife in SA where the violence is often enacted publicly and graphically (as seen particularly in cases of lesbophobic rape). It serves to remind women they are vulnerable to such violence. Rape, as such, becomes an effective means by which to “keep women in check” and often leads to them changing their behaviour or movements to avoid such violence.
It is clear that we cannot rely on ineffective and often-patriarchal justice systems to address GBV or to protect women and girls.
Many organisations, including Powa, Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust, and the Tears Foundation (among others) work tirelessly to provide support and advocacy to survivors of sexual and GBV. Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust reports that between March 2021 and March 2022, “9,650 survivors and their supporters received direct services from Rape Crisis”.
The support and advocacy work help survivors to access medical and mental health support, file police reports, and access courts. Such organisations also educate on toxic gender ideologies and debunk myths.
Perhaps, however, it is also time that we take to the streets – as in Iran – to demand better conditions for women, girls, and marginalised communities. We need to unite to create a country in which women and girls have a future free from the ever-present threat of violence. We need to demand an effective justice system that holds (primarily) men accountable for their actions. We need to make it clear we will no longer allow the complacency and lack of urgency by the government in addressing violence. We need to UNITE in demanding a country that is safe for women and girls.