Fellow South Africans,
In my tackle to the second Presidential Summit on Gender-based Violence and Femicide at the starting of this month, I stated that we are a nation at battle with itself.
This is borne out by the crime statistics for the final quarter, which had been launched final week, simply forward of the begin of the annual 16 Days of Activism for No Violence towards Women and Children.
Between July and September this 12 months, 989 girls had been murdered, 1 277 had been victims of tried homicide and greater than 13 000 had been victims of critical assault. In simply these three months, greater than 10 000 rape circumstances had been opened with the South African Police Service (SAPS).
Not even youngsters, our most weak residents and most deserving of our care and safety, had been spared. In the six months to September 2022, over 500 youngsters had been killed.
We are in the grip of horrible crimes, by which offenders are identified to the victims. Women and youngsters are being violated not solely by strangers but by individuals who are identified to them – by their fathers, boyfriends and husbands, by colleagues, academics and even classmates.
However, as a society, we are not powerless to cease these crimes. We can cease gender-based violence.
Over the [past] few years, there was a rising mobilisation of all sectors of society to cease the abuse of girls and youngsters. There have been some areas of progress.
The newest crime statistics present some of the successes of the prison justice system in bringing perpetrators to ebook. In the reporting interval, the SAPS Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences items arrested over 4 000 alleged perpetrators of gender-based violence and 410 alleged rapists had been traced and arrested.
More than 17 000 trial-ready GBV circumstances had been processed by groups of the SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority. The courts are additionally handing down heavier sentences to perpetrators.
While we should be inspired that many of the perpetrators are not being allowed to get away with their crimes, our foremost job is to forestall males and boys from turning into abusers in the first place.
Men are the perpetrators of gender-based violence and it’s subsequently males [who] want to vary. It is males – as husbands and companions, as fathers, colleagues, friends and classmates – who want to contemplate their very own attitudes in the direction of girls and women.
To give which means to 16 Days of Activism we now want to have interaction the males of South Africa in a dialogue about their accountability in the direction of girls and poisonous masculinity. All of society should be mobilised to organise these males’s dialogues.
The authorities, non-governmental organisations and the non-public sector should be inspired to assist such dialogues in each office, place of worship, faculty, school and college, and in each neighborhood. Every day numerous entities dedicate assets to public engagements, conferences and seminars on numerous urgent social, financial and political points of the day. These are boards the place this engagement should occur.
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Eradicating gender-based violence isn’t any much less pressing or essential.
These crimes have an effect on each facet of our society, together with well being and well-being, security and safety, and financial development and productiveness.
In these dialogues, we have to look at our understanding of sexual consent.
We should problem the delusion that rape is simply thought-about rape if it includes a stranger, or if the sufferer responded by screaming for assist, preventing again or reporting the matter instantly to the police.
By bringing collectively males of all races, courses and generations to talk frankly about their understanding of masculinity, we will present how some assumptions and practices that many individuals contemplate ‘normal’ are dangerous to girls and youngsters.
We should change beliefs that males are sturdy and ladies are weak, that males need to be in cost, or that males can do as they please with girls. Men want to grasp that they can and should categorical their ache and frustrations with out inflicting hurt on others.
As president, I stand able to take part in males’s dialogues. I name on ministers, premiers, religious-, political- and neighborhood leaders, sports activities individuals, artists, celebrities and enterprise individuals to do the identical.
The males of South Africa owe it to the girls and youngsters of this nation to take up the wrestle towards gender-based violence.
These males’s dialogues can be platforms for males to problem one another to change into higher males, extra accountable, extra understanding and extra caring.