Minister in the Presidency responsible for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Sindisiwe Chikunga, has reiterated the call for all South Africans to rally behind the country’s fight against Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF).

This includes acts of GBVF perpetrated by intimate partners and family members.

Chikunga emphasised the urgent need to move beyond sloganeering.

‘There is an urgent need to invest adequate resources to respond to the GBVF pandemic and all forms of discrimination by the whole of society and the government,’ Chikunga said.

In its 2020 report titled “Killings of Women and Girls by Their Intimate Partner or Other Family Members – Global Estimates,” the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated that, on average, a woman or girl is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes.

A year later, estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO) also found that one in three women worldwide has suffered from physical and sexual violence in her lifetime, and
that one in five women who have had at least one partner has experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner.

Chikunga noted that despite the exponential high level of commendable advocacy and policy commitment, Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) remains one of the most frequent forms of violence against women and girls.

She added that recent studies affirm that despite decades of activism, advocacy, and action by state and non-state actors, the available evidence shows that progress in stopping IPV and related violence has been deeply inadequate.

While government has heeded this call and elevated the fight against GBVF into one of its top priorities, Chikunga acknowledged that in the past 30 years of democratic dispensation, the plight of women and girls in South Africa has remained deplorable and far from ideal.

‘As we begin the seventh Administration, our message has to be clear when it comes to the fight against GBVF; the master’s tools will not destroy the master’s house. We need new tool
s, and we need them urgently.

‘South Africans have bestowed on our shoulders a responsibility to recognise and respond appropriately to the systemic and structural nature of discrimination, and violence against women and girls. We can no longer tinker on the edges and expect systemic results.’

Across educational, religious, cultural, sporting, and creative environments, the Minister said, ‘all our values and practices must be put into question and deliberately repurposed to support the fight against patriarchal chauvinism in all spheres of life.’

She further stressed a need for systemic change, noting that the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities is committed to enforcing gender equality throughout government and society as a constitutional imperative, and ‘not as an afterthought that emerges when the next victim is lying cold.’

‘Women have been and continue to be the basic foundation of all human civilisation, and yet we wake up every day and petition a man for the right to survive un
til the end of the day.

‘We need community intelligence – researchers, scholars, advocates, and activists who will go beyond reproducing mainstream narratives and get a granular picture from communities that face violence at a community or even street level, to ensure that justice is served,’ Chikunga said.

Source: South African Government News Agency