With the festive season, also dubbed the silly season, criminality is always expected to rear its ugly head any given time of the day.
Since women are primarily the easy targets for criminals because of their inability to defend themselves, a joint self-defence course provided the essential skills to over 25 West Rand women to navigate through a dangerous situation without necessarily putting themselves in harm’s way.
Hosted by On Point Protection Skills (OPPS) International in partnership with Jaguar Land Rover West Rand, BCI Security and CREACHA on 2 December, the four-hour long impactful event left the women feeling empowered and trained to tackle a hostile situation. This interactive course was attended by the likes of Councillors Amelia Bester and Leah Knott.
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Erica Kornau from CREACHA, who said the event was centred around 16 Days of Activism Against Women and Children Abuse, and business networking, spoke about the misconceptions that they had to prove wrong about the course. “When women come to these events they are usually unsure as to what to expect as many come in with the idea of a strenuous physical session, but what we’ve discovered from the testimonials is that there is a common thread around the mindset change, as people often come reserved and leave with a lot more confidence because of the teachings from the course,” she explained.
With a pool of trained mixed martial arts or combat instructors plying their trade to help women around their disciplines, OPPS founder and chief OPP-erator, Vince May told the Northsider about the uniqueness of his self-defence course for women.
“This is not just a self-defence course where you come in and start defending yourself against a guy who is trying to grab or attack you with a knife; the big thing about this one is mental preparation and applying it in true situational awareness before physical defence is taught,” he explained.
Instead of encouraging women to come dressed in gym wear, May rather advised them to dress weather-appropriate, “… because when you’re attacked you might not be barefoot or in runners, but in heels or in your house in sleepers,” he justified.
Although May could not demonstrate or list some of the skills for confidentiality reasons, he said a part of his course involves teaching women to fight at close quarters, saying, “…. because that is where they are the strongest – such techniques that can put an offender down in less than three seconds”.
A strongly built Arno Dorfling from BCI Security, who helped to prove the effectiveness of these simple techniques, said he was surprised when he could not move when one of the females tried a stunt on him.
In the past, police have advised victims of crime never to try to be heroes as this act could either injure or get them killed.
May responded to that, saying that part of the mental preparation segment of the course is teaching women to assess the situation before making any move.
“Some situations can be avoided – you don’t always have to fight unless you have to, and do the best you can if necessary,” he said.
“There is nothing wrong with running away to save your life – there is no loss of pride at all. Sometimes the toughest thing is to be smart,” he added.
As the vision is to empower all women in the country, May encouraged enthusiasts to book their appointments via email at oppsint@icloud.com and follow OPPS on social media platforms.
