Tikkun empowers young women for activism
ALEXANDRA – Afrika Tikkun is preparing women to take up activism for gender and community rights.
The Young Urban Women (Yuw), a group of activists for girls’ rights in various townships countrywide, has been empowered to identify, research and develop advocacy strategies of issues affecting women in townships.
Afrika Tikkun works hand in hand with them, as well as caregivers of children with disabilities, believing that they are the real experts when it comes to human rights issues in their lives, homes, communities and schools.
Since 2014, Yuw has been raising their voices locally, and internationally – speaking last year at the African Union summit in Johannesburg, in New York at the United Nations, in India and locally at summits and conferences on issues affecting South African women.
While the women in Alex have identified outdoor toilets as a problem, women elsewhere have identified other issues including teenage pregnancy and complacency toward gender-based violence.
They are lobbying their community, schools, the government and other stakeholders to achieve their goals for transformation.
Read: Outside toilets a nightmare for women
One issue faced widely is complacency about reporting sexual assault. Research on gender-based violence revealed 49 per cent fear violence, 36 per cent fear sexual violence, and 33 per cent have been victims of violence.
The research also found out that only 13 per cent had reported violence (5 per cent sexual violence) to the police or a Thuthuzela Care Centre. The lack of awareness of what sexual assault is, prevents women from reporting such incidents and from seeking legal assistance and the rights of protection and justice.
There have also been incidents where girls are punished, targeted or shamed for reporting incidences of gender-based violence – including one instance in Diepsloot where a girl was expelled for reporting a sexual assault by a teacher.
Access to police services is equally challenging for young persons, and in particular for those with a disability. An audit of Afrika Tikkun’s case files revealed 12 cases of rape (including a gang rape and multiple incidents of rape), three of sexual assault and one of sexual grooming.
Read: Woman empowers women
One under-age child with a disability was married off to an older man, and another was kidnapped. To date, none of these cases, which have been reported to the police, have gone anywhere in their respective investigations.
In order to make their voices heard, women in Alex, Diepsloot, the inner city and Orange Farm have, under the auspices of Afrika Tikkun, targeted schools (including schools for children with a disability), clinics and the community with peer sexuality and life skills education and raising awareness.
In particular, they are empowering persons with a disability. In all the areas, access to protection and justice has been slow and disappointing. However, it is believed that through these activations in communities, things are slowly starting to change.
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