Cape Town - As the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign draws to a close, activists will be chained to the gates of parliament in a strong call to change the narrative for women and girls.
This year, the UN marks the 16 Days under the theme “UNiTE! Activism to end violence against women and girls”.
According to the UN, more than 1 in 3 women experience gender-based violence during their lifetime; more than five women or girls are killed every hour by someone in their own family; and less than 40% of women who experience violence seek help of some sort.
In the province, fourteen of the twenty shelters that form part of the Western Cape Women’s Shelter Movement (WSM) face imminent closure should they not be able to raise emergency funding.
Discover Your Power founder and women’s activist, Venetia Orgill, from Mitchells Plain, said healing was needed.
Orgill first chained herself to the gates of parliament in 2020, where she stood for 12 hours to highlight the high rate of child murders in the province.
This year on December 16 she plans to do it again from 7pm until 7am.
“GBV is all over the world. I’m counselling someone based in Turkey at the moment who found me on Facebook. Seven months after he contacted me, his wife who lives in another country reached out too and neither knows the other is talking to me - that’s how bad it is.
It’s sad to think how we as humans are killing each other mentally.
“My trauma did not start when I got married at 17; it started at 6-years - old. When a friend of my uncle touched me, my school career came to a dead stop. My teacher touched me in standard six.
Raped by a man who is supposed to love you, who married you, beaten to a pulp by a man who swore to God never to abuse you because he knew what you had been through with your first husband.
He gives you everything, teaches you to drive. But in the meantime the abuse is silent. Some couples have been married for over 50 years, but women are walking around with that abuse and all they have got is God to hang onto. They are very dependent on the man. If you got married in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s you made a vow to God.
Divorce was not as open as it is now. Those days mothers said you made your bed, go lie on it. Today I want to tell women you don't need to suffer in silence. Go out and find help, but start within yourself first. We need to forgive and move on with our lives.
I'm done with anger; it steals my joy. “Even chaining myself next week is not about parliament because they are not hearing us. I am doing it to see how we are going to change the narrative of hurting to a story of healing.
Our message must be that there is healing, no matter what. We do not have to hang on to 1983’s hurt in 2023. If we do, we are only dragging our demons around with us and we will never be good partners for anybody else.
We need to really forgive, starting with ourselves.”
Avril Andrews, director of the Alcardo Andrews Foundation (AAF), which was established in Hanover Park in 2015 in honour of her son who lost his life through gang violence, said more work needed to be done with men as a preventative measure and family restoration.
“There is stuff that is not reported, because there are a lot of angry men around. It's like a generational curse passed down from their father; It's like men don't know how to deal with their anger and frustration. I think a lot of prevention work needs to be done with boys and we also need to educate boys how to deal with ladies that bully them.
“I’ve been doing GBV work from a very young age, I just kept it very private because people were afraid to speak out.
Some young girls today are still very ashamed and they wouldn't want the community to know what happened to them. Sometimes they don't want their parents to know yet.
They feel ‘my mother warned me I must not be out late, she's gonna beat me’. The mother is not educated so you have to journey with the mother. Once I prepared the girl, consulted with the mother and told the girl I would create the space to tell your mommy, the mother then flared up on the child.
The mother didn’t know how to deal with it because she was raped and never dealt with her rape. She’s feeling like I wanted to protect her, and that's why I warned her.
Now the pain is coming out as anger. Mothers want to see that you are real. Sometimes just sending them for counselling doesn’t work, so I would ask don't you wanna go for a coffee with me? So it’s a totally different experience and they are more open to that.
“It is possible to restore the family if they are ready, but it's a journey and process. It's a lot to do with forgiveness.”
The Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children (SBCWC) was opened in 1999 in response to the high rates of violence against women and children on the Cape Flats.
It provides essential, cost-free services 365 days a year to abused women and children, including a 24-hour crisis response programme; a residential shelter programme and transitional housing for abused women and their children; a psycho-social support programme including a children’s counselling programme; a substance abuse programme and accredited job-skills training programmes.
SBCWC director, Bernadine Bachar, said: “It is mostly intimate partner violence we see at the centre. It ranges from physical abuse to sexual assault.
Research shows a woman will leave eight times before she leaves for good.
People don't take that into account. There are so many considerations that cause her to go back all the time. They revolve around economics. She might not have the resources to support herself and her children.
Sometimes he owns the home, etc. She doesn’t leave for good immediately, but eventually she leaves when it becomes intolerable.
The Western Cape Women’s Shelter Movement (WSM) found 70% of women who come through a shelter programme do not go back. It's something that works.”
Bachar added that the responsibility to end GBV rested with everyone, including government departments, civil society and the private sector.
“Government does not have funds to fully fund NGOs, the answer lies in the private sector.”
The unique drivers that play into the high level of GBV in SA, Bachar said, were unemployment, poverty, substances and the legacy of the apartheid era “that speaks to things like power and control and desensitisation to violence”.
“Above that we live in a very patriarchal society. We are not dismantling that patriarchal attitude, that's why we are not getting to grips with GBV.
We are not doing enough work with men. We need to start talking to children, and dismantle those beliefs that women are less than men, that men have power and control over women etc - it is a systemic thing.”
The World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2022 found at the current rate of progress, it would take 132 years to reach full gender parity.
UN under-secretary-general and UN Women executive director, Sima Bahous, emphasised that grassroots activists, women’s human rights defenders and survivor advocates revealed the extent of that violence.
“They collect and shape statistics, document attacks and bring the violence that happens from the shadows into the light. Their work remains as crucial as it ever was. They offer us a path to bringing this violation of women’s rights to an end.”
Bahous called for increased long-term funding and support to women’s rights organisations and strengthening of protection mechanisms for women human rights defenders and women’s rights activists.
SBCWC are in desperate need of funding for the running costs of their organisation. To assist, more information can be found at www.saartjiebaartmancentre.org.za
Cape Times