“I think what the youth need to realise is that we all know someone who has been affected by gender-based violence, so this isn’t only a political issue – its a personal issue,” says Candice Chirwa, a young activist with a particular interest in menstruation rights and safety, who contributed to the drafting of the Youth Day parade memorandum.

Chirwa was among several youth organisers and memorandum-drafters Daily Maverick spoke to in an effort to gauge the youth’s perspectives on the state of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) in South Africa, and how youth activists and society at large can push this fight into a brighter future.

What Chirwa highlights is that the memorandum, and its GBVF section in particular, is interesting because it is not particularly radical in the solutions it proposes. Rather, it calls for an end to GBV by highlighting policies that have “yet to be implemented”, and asks the government to stop “talking the talk” and apply these policies and be actionable.

“I think in drafting the memorandum I realised that the policies are there – it’s just they haven’t been implemented and we’re not actually seeing the necessary scale of impact that we should be as society.”

Chirwa’s sentiment is echoed and elaborated upon by Zaki Mamdoo, deputy convener of the Youth Day parade. Mamdoo points out that the memorandum’s GBVF section draws largely from the demands of other previous movements who’ve made important points that have yet to be addressed.

“We’ve incorporated incredibly important inputs from a number of different partner organisations and young activists who are dedicated to combating GBVF and the pursuit of justice for survivors and victims,” he says. 

“We’ve also drawn from the demands put forward by the #TotalShutdown Movement as many of these have not been met as yet.”

Demands for change 

In terms of what these demands specifically entail, Mamdoo provides a succinct synopsis that draws directly from the memorandum’s GBVF section, and covers concerns of trauma handling, the acquisition of justice and accountability, counselling, education for various social sectors and victim-centric legislative reform. 

“In this we’re demanding that all police officers undergo extensive and ongoing training to ensure that victims/survivors are met with empathy and that they can be offered free psychological assistance for whatever period required by the individual, and that government provides well-run centres for survivors with access to required services to deal with the trauma and provisions of resources for continued life,” he outlines. 

Another demand is that government works with stakeholders and public interest law groups to explore a restructuring of the justice system to prioritise the wellbeing and safeguarding of GBVF victims, whilst also ensuring effective repercussions for perpetrators, says Mamdoo. 

“This includes the prioritisation of the provision of legal aid to victims of GBVF, including those who want to hold the state accountable for its failure to protect them from violence, and those who have been subjected to lawsuits for publicly naming perpetrators.” 

Those behind the memorandum want to see government publish a national training schedule on GBVF and gender diversity for all relevant government departments, including home affairs, social development, justice, safety and security, and health.

This should be complemented by a national training schedule on GBVF and gender diversity for all teachers, educators and school staff from pre-schools through to senior phase in both the public and private sectors, continues Mamdoo.

Mamdoo says that taking stock of repeated demands of the youth in combating GBVF is part of the effort to mobilise civil society in exerting pressure on the state to actualise them.

“In drawing from the #TotalShutdown Movement, we are reasserting the vision and some of the solutions that have already been put forward by gender-justice activists,” he says. 

“In this we hope to help mobilise more people to take up the cause and to help build pressure on government to answer the cries of our youth – many of which are not necessarily new, but which have fallen on deaf ears.”

Mobilisation

For Zaharah Msomi, a member of The Youth Club and contributor to the drafting of the GBVF section of the memorandum, the mobilisation Mamdoo speaks of is essential for exacting the change the youth seek. 

 “Change is always affected through mobilisation – the youth must be educated on the crisis of GBV, be outraged, be loud and actionable in effecting change,” she says. 

“Each of us is tasked with holding not only other individuals accountable, but also ourselves when we have become complicit in GBV.” 

Part of this effort, and how it is rendered in the memorandum, is highlighting the inclusivity of anti-GBV efforts. For Chirwa, it is this attention to all varying victims of GBVF that makes this memorandum uniquely of and by the youth.

“It doesn’t only just speak to women and girls, but it speaks to all victims to ensure that they have access to any forms of resources,” she says. 

“It speaks to issues of queer spaces, and what I think is important is representation in these conversations, and actually having intentional messages drafted in the memorandum – the whole document is very inclusive of all youth, no matter gender, sexuality, race or religion.”

An additional area of inclusivity in the reach of the memorandum, and how the youth tackle GBVF, is the consideration of menstrual health as one of many fronts of the fight.

“What people often tend to not realise is that period poverty does form a part of gender-based violence in that a lot of young menstruators will experience either bullying, stigma, shame or any form of sexual harrassment when they are forced to exclude themselves from society menstrual huts,” argues Chirwa. 

“A lot of menstruators in this country suffer with period poverty, because it is a reality that three million girls in South Africa don’t have access to period products (and) it could be more; this is still something that has a major impact on social activities and is a human rights issue.”

Unfair burden

Throughout these conversations it becomes apparent that South African youths feel an esoteric commitment to social change. But what does this generational mandate really look like? And is it a fair burden?

“We, the youth, are more conscious of its [GBVF’s] absurdity and are moved to combat it too,” posits Msomi. “On the other hand, the older generation, from my observation, even though they are aware of how wrong it is, they tend to downplay GBV and gaslight the victim.”

Msomi draws from her own lived and cultural experiences to substantiate this point.

“As a black person, I have seen this in the black community, which is effected through the rhetoric of ukuBekezela – to persevere, hold on,” she says. 

“There’s also this engrained concept that marriage has bound a woman to die at her matrimonial home, which makes it hard for victims or survivors to contemplate returning home when they find themselves trapped in an abusive marriage.”

Msomi acknowledges, however, that these cultural anecdotes are not unique to any one group, and contain universally toxic traits of a broader societal culture of GBVF. She adds that cultural traits do not automatically condemn victims.

“In such a lens, violence is viewed as a display of ‘love’, never of aggression. It’s something the victim/survivor can overlook because focus is shifted to provisions (usually materially) made by the perpetrator to the victim/survivor,” she says. 

“I also am cognisant that this doesn’t mean they are far from salvation, and try to understand that it is not of their own accord.” 

Chirwa draws on the history of revolutions to articulate how young citizens are positioned to be at the forefront of social reformations, citing the Arab Spring as an example.

“A lot of times young people are very frustrated, and in particular young women and girls and marginalised groups, because it speaks to the core of their existence,” she says. 

“It speaks to whether they know they’ll make it back home, or whether they’ll just turn out to be another hashtag.”

The Arab Spring is largely remembered for how it weaponised social media for its activism, and the importance of this technological component in the anti-GBV effort is not lost on Chirwa, who notes that social media has been used as a tool to find victims of abuse and GBV and spread the word of these experiences.

“Perhaps the call is on young people to actually look beyond just tweeting and sharing Instagram stories and reels, and actually saying, ‘How do we take this energy we’ve put on social media and actually translate it into the ground, into the society we live in?’,” she suggests.

Msomi and Chirwa agree that the youth take on a disproportionate amount of responsibility for pushing for these anti-GBV changes. Msomi, in particular, finds this divide unfair in light of the often limited resources at the disposal of young South Africans.

“The fact that we still have to advocate for change shows that we do take on a disproportionate amount of responsibility in combating GBV,” says Msomi. 

“This is not fair as we do not have the power government possesses or the resources at its disposal; this means that despite our fettered yet genuine efforts, the youth and civil society do more than the government, which is really antithetical to the purpose of government.”

This divide is also generational, according to Chirwa, particularly in terms of generalised attitudes surrounding issues of GBVF.

“There’s definitely a generational divide; there’s still that mentality amongst old people that what happens in the home must stay at home… no one needs to know what happened,” she says. 

“There’s an element of cancel culture that I think we should give credit to because people are able to voice their experiences and say ‘this person has done this to me’ as the young generation, whereas the older generation would definitely not do that.” 

Despite this perceived divide, Chirwa gives due credit to the important role that older generations and activists play in this fight.

“I think there is that divide, and I think that divide will also have an impact on how we resolve GBV in this country, but I do think we need the experience of those practitioners who have been in the space who have set up programmes and facilitated necessary interventions,” she acknowledges. 

“We do need their experience; we do need those conversations to bridge that gap.”

One anti-GBV student activist from Stellenbosch University, Grace Mngadi, applauds the work being done by these youth stakeholders in organising the Youth Day parade and drafting a comprehensive memorandum of demands.

“I can’t thank these brave youngsters enough for pulling this together; this is exactly what we need, now more than ever,” says Mngadi. 

“An effort of this magnitude serves to articulate just how essential the youth are to instigating change, and how potent our efforts towards progress can be.”

Mngadi goes on to caution her fellow anti-GBV youth activists about being intentionally specific in delineating vulnerable groups and their unique oppressions and needs. For her, this is the best way to both cover multiple relevant groups – such as queer and trans communities – within the overarching banner of the anti-GBV effort, while still adequately serving each and every group within a framework of “radical equality feminism”.

Chirwa likens our nation’s cycle of GBVF to that of gun violence in the United States, where a tragedy occurs and outrage follows, but no preventative interventions ensue – and then it happens again. 

She feels that this cyclical complacency sets in, in part, because of the lack of representation for young people in parliament, political parties and throughout political structures.

“I think there’s something about young people – we are so dynamic and innovative in how we resolve any simple issue – and there’s a motivation, there’s a passion, there’s a determination,” she asserts. 

“We are being ignored because there are not young people in these spaces who can change things. It really is unfortunate, because the people that we see who are political leaders don’t represent us. They really, really don’t.”

What’s conveyed most in Chirwa’s words is a generational fatigue that characterises the youth’s attitude towards the persistent pervasiveness of GBVF in this country. 

She defines it as a generation of young people calling for the “cycle of abuse to end”, and to not have a “continuum of the same thing that happens every year where multiple scores of women and children are dying at the hands of men”.

“We need the policies and groundwork to accompany the shock and outrage to ensure we can exist,” she says. 

“This Youth Day parade is proving that we are no longer just going to sit behind on the sidelines; we are actually going to take heed and make a difference.”

Msomi perhaps best condenses the overarching plight of the youth against GBVF as personified by this memorandum and Youth Day parade:

“We must light a fire under government to ensure that there is actualised reform in our justice system that is effective in curbing GBV. The future and the youth are inseparable. 

“If we do not act in creating a society that fights against GBV and sexual crimes and obliterate their existence, the future that we dream of might not exist.” DM

Giuseppe Rajkumar Guerandi is a class of 2021 Journalism Honours graduate at Stellenbosch University, with an undergraduate degree in International Studies. They pride themselves in being a half-Indian, half-Italian, non-binary South African, with hopes of expanding the platform for marginalised stories and furthering South Africa’s stake in broader international relations. An intern at Daily Maverick, they are now a regular freelancer and have been accepted into the Masters programme in Journalism at Columbia University in New York City.