Ending gender-based violence is a job for all

Gender-based violence is like a snake and the best way to kill it is to cut off its head. The already sky-high levels of violence inflicted on women, children and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex community in South Africa have soared higher still under lockdown.

The government GBV and femicide command centre recorded more than 120 000 incidents in the first three weeks of the lockdown alone. Vodacom’s support call centres saw a 65% spike in calls. And these figures represent only those cases which were reported – a small fraction of the actual number.

Against this backdrop, one can only welcome the president’s announcement on Wednesday, when he was updating the nation on Covid-19, around the government’s latest efforts to address the scourge and plans to boost support services and zone in on hotspots.

Like the recently announced three new Bills aimed at tightening South Africa’s laws around GBV, better access to better support services for survivors is long overdue. But on the back of the countless government interventions that have taken place over the course of the years and with the crisis only worsening, one can’t help but wonder why we – as a society – can’t get a grip on this.

If we’re going to talk about the war against GBV, we also need to talk about what its final defeat – total eradication – would take: cutting off its lifeline. And while government needs to lead from the front, it’s something we all have a part to play in achieving.

GBV keeps thriving because we keep feeding it, sometimes with what we say and do but more often with what we don’t. All too often, we let the worst of us be the loudest.

We don’t speak up enough about the toxic ideologies at the source of GBV that have, over time, taken root, and we don’t speak up enough about the subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – ways they are still being perpetuated. Until we do, they continue and so does GBV.

In the same way we need to call out racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and the glorification of violence – when it’s coming from people we don’t liken as well as people we do and when it’s in public as well as private. We need to set the bar higher – not with lofty aspirations towards a state of absolute neutrality – but with our sights set on creating a world where all of us simply feel safe.

We also need to teach our children, with our words and by example, to set the bar higher. They, too, have to take up the fight because the war on GBV won’t be won overnight, but over generations. More blood will be shed and more lives will be lost. But more still, if we don’t start now.

Stronger laws and providing survivors with the help they need is crucially important. But we cannot expect to turn the tide without everyone buying in and taking an active role. We owe it to the memories of Uyinene Mrwetyana, Tshegofatso Pule and her unborn baby, Naledi Phangindawo and all the others like them – those whose stories made the headlines and those whose didn’t – to step up.

We fail them at our peril and at the peril of our future.

Bernadette Wicks.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.