Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga: Parliamentary Debate on 16 Days of Activism

Speech by Minister Chikunga in the Parliamentary Debate on 16 Days of Activism

Honourable Speaker,
Members of this August House,
Citizens of our beloved
South Africa, Good morning!

1. Background and introduction
Honourable Speaker, we thank you very much for the opportunity to open this debate on the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence and Femicide - an international campaign that shines the spotlight on one of the most heinous violations of human rights: violence against women and girls.

In March of 2021, the Director-General of the World Health Organization cautioned that, "Unlike COVID-19, violence against women cannot be stopped with a vaccine. We can only fight it with deep-rooted and sustained efforts to change harmful attitudes, improve access to opportunities and services for women and girls, and foster healthy and mutually respectful relationships".

Throughout this campaign, we aim to rally all of society to reflect on the past, ongoing, and intersectional ways through which violence against women is reproduced at systemic, structural, household, and individual levels.

To achieve this, we need to go beyond the formal definition of violence and provide context to women's experiences of violence. To frame our campaign properly, we turn to the work of Professor Phumla Gqola, who describes what she calls the "Patriarchy Script".

Beyond its colonial and apartheid origins, when women were considered disposable minors, GBV can be traced to "a script that has conditioned men to feel entitled to more of everything, including more of women's time, labour, and bodies. Violence is often the response to any challenge to these scripts. Women's insistence on owning their time, names, work, bodies is then met with extreme aggression, whether in public institutions like schools, malls, courts, hospitals, churches, or private ones like marriage and family".

Women continue to live under what Phumla has also referred to as, "The Female Fear Factory", a constant and ever-present threat of violence. She says, "Through lessons large and small, women also come to understand that they are seen as 'safe to violate' and disposable; that if something violent happens to them, they may not be believed, and, if they are, they will often be blamed for not having prevented or avoided it".

We have no choice but to disrupt the "patriarchy script" and dismantle the "female fear factory" in our homes and communities.

2. The prevalence of GBVF: global, continental and domestic trends
Honourable Members, the scale of violence and femicide against women and girls is staggering. Data gathered by UN Women from at least 161 countries reveals that "an estimated 736 million women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence."

In South Africa: a woman is killed every three hours; over 50% of women are killed by an intimate partner and in 2023, SAPS reported over 50,000 cases of sexual offences, predominantly affecting women and children.

As the UN Secretary-General observed, we are living through "a millennia of patriarchy - where violence against women, including femicide, is at epidemic levels."

3. The prevalence study and the killing of Maria Makgatho and Locadia Ndlovu and the massacre in Lusikisiki
What makes this violence disheartening and difficult to prevent is that itoccurs where people's guards are naturally down. On the 18th of November 2024, we will launch a Prevalence Study on GBVF by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). The findings point to a continuation of this trend.

Honourable Speaker, the descendants of the women who freed this country from slavery, colonialism, and apartheid are themselves not free today.

Maria Makgatho and Locadia Ndlovu were killed and later fed to pigs. In addition to being reduced to servitude under inhumane conditions, women and girls on farms across South Africa endure heinous forms of abuse.

We would also like to remind this House that 15 of the 18 family members killed in Lusikisiki were women. We applaud the SAPS for the pace at which
they are moving in that case.

4. Progress in the past 30 years
Honourable Speaker, over the past three decades, our government has implemented several targeted interventions to combat gender-based violence, including the establishment of Thuthuzela Care Centres, GBV Command Centres, and key legislative reforms such as the Protection from Harassment Act, the Sexual Offences and Related Matters Amendment Act, and the Domestic Violence Act, among others.

In addition to these legislative instruments, over the years, we have also introduced policy initiatives such as Sexual Offences Units and Sexual Offences Courts, all aimed at reinforcing the fight against sexual crimes.

More recently, the President signed into law the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, a landmark move to provide strategic leadership, enforce accountability, and ensure justice for victims.

This reflects our ongoing emphasis on prevention, enhanced protection for victims, and ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable.

5. Catalytic interventions for the economic empowerment of women
Honourable Speaker, GBVF and the economic disempowerment of women are two sides of the same toxic coin. Many women remain trapped in abusive relationships because the abuser is the breadwinner.

Economic empowerment is incomplete without securing women's meaningful access to land, the basis of all economic activity and a source of dignity. We are thus prioritising the transfer of productive land and assets to women for commercial purposes.

For instance, working with Transnet Properties, we have identified over 22 land pieces in Limpopo, KZN, and the Eastern Cape. These sites will be leased to women at highly subsidised rates, enabling them to develop sustainable enterprises. We are actively identifying more sites and warehouses across all nine provinces.

I have also tasked the Women's Economic Assembly (WECONA) to assemble a team of experts that will dissect Public Procurement and Gender Responsive Supply Chains to ensure that a minimum of 40% of Government procurement goes to women-owned businesses in terms of the Public Procurement Act. By so doing, we are eliminating dependency and tolerance of Gender-Based Violence and Femicide.

Honourable Members, we aim to "harness technology and innovation to combat gender-based violence and accelerate a gender perspective in the digital economy". We will do this by exploring the potential of new technologies to prevent and respond to GBVF. This technology will be launched on the same day as we launch the campaign.

The increased use of social media and digital platforms has encouraged the growth of technology-mediated or online GBVF. It is necessary to implement robust interventions to counter this.

Under the theme "30 Years of Advancing Collective Action to End Violence Against Women and Children", this year's campaign will be launched on the 25th of November in Bojanala (NW).

Conclusion
Honourable Members, Dr. Tedros reminds us that, unlike a virus, there is no vaccine to end gender-based violence. But this truth does not leave us powerless-it challenges us to find the cure. The cure is in our policies, in our schools, in our homes, and in every community that refuses to accept violence as a norm. It is in the unity and action of a nation that no longer tolerates the subjugation of its women and children. Let us be the generation that found the cure, that transformed words into actions, and that worked tirelessly until the chains of violence were broken once and for all. This is our mission, and we will see it through.

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