Women For Change (WFC) has formally submitted the petition to the Home Affairs and Sport, Arts, and Culture ministries with more than 50,000 signatures. Picture: Kayla DeLaura / Getty Images
Nearly two months after launching a petition against Chris Brown’s scheduled performance in South Africa, non-profit organisation Women For Change (WFC) has formally submitted the petition to the Home Affairs, and Sport, Arts, and Culture ministries with more than 50 000 signatures.
“On 25 November, marking the start of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence (GVB), we formally submitted our petition with 51,330 signatures to Big Concerts, the Minister of Home Affairs, and the Minister of Sport, Arts, and Culture,” WFC Executive Director Sabrina Walter told The Citizen.
WFC advocates for the constitutional rights of women and children in South Africa. The organisation also speaks out against violence by women against men.
On 1 October 2024, WFC issued an official statement strongly condemning the upcoming Brown concerts scheduled for 14 and 15 December 2024 in Johannesburg.
The following day a petition was launched to prevent global star Brown from performing owing to his history of violence against women.
The opposition to having Brown perform in South Africa also stems from the fact that South Africa has an endemic problem with GBV.
“A country where 5,578 women were murdered between April 2023 and March 2024, reflecting a 33.8% increase in femicide cases compared to the previous year,” averred Walter.
In late August this year, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu presented the latest crime statistics, which revealed a grim reality: 19,961 rapes were reported to the police in just the first six months of this year, underscoring the ongoing scourge of GBV in the country.
On the day marking the beginning of 16 Days of Activism Against GBV, Deputy President Paul Mashatile, speaking at its national launch in Rustenburg, said GBV is a “national crisis that requires a national response.”
The Citizen reached out to the Home Affairs ministry and event organisers Big Concerts for comment but they did not respond.
Since submitting the petition, Walters said, “We have not received a reply”.
ALSO READ: Mashatile lists ‘concrete actions’ in GBV fight at 16 Days of Activism launch
A documentary detailing Brown’s history with GBV was released Chris Brown: A History of Violence was released in October in which Walter hoped would enlighten people about Brown’s nature as an abuser.
There have been 28 reported accusations of violent against Brown since the abuse of Rihanna.
“The R. Kelly documentary ultimately played a crucial role in his arrest, and we’ll be watching closely to see how this unfolds. We’re prepared to take action based on what emerges from this documentary,” she said in October.
In a recent interview, Chis Brown’s former manager of a dozen years Tina Davis shared how music was used to clean Brown’s public image after physically abusing pop star and then-girlfriend, Rihanna.
“No one would play him [Brown] on the radio and at that point, you had to have a radio, there were no DSPs [Digital Service Providers] and different other platforms for you to use,” said Davis.
In 2009, Brown pleaded guilty to felony assault on Rihanna and was sentenced to a five-year probation and six months community service.
Davis said they conjured a strategy to get Brown back into the mainstream by flooding the industry with mixtapes and collaborations with other artists.
“…And the way that we did it was we put him on features for everything. Anybody that called us, he jumped on…there was a feature on everything.”
During this time Brown was doing a slew of mixtapes, which are traditionally distributed freely to build up hype for an artist, with US rapper Tyga.
“We were like that’s the strategy. We’re going to do a whole bunch of mixtapes and just keep flooding the business and put music out. But we’re also on everybody[’s song] that calls us, so every time a big artist puts a record out, they have to play it…so after a while, every other record was featuring Chris Brown,” she said.
“That’s how we were able to get back at radio and then Deuces came right after that.”
NOW READ: Chris Brown: Why are we giving an abuser a platform?
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