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Civil society kept in the dark on government action against gender-based violence and femicide

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Alison Tilley is the head of advocacy and special projects at the Open Democracy Advice Centre. Jeanne Bodenstein is Advocacy Specialist at Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust.

In his recent address to the nation on Covid-19, President Cyril Ramaphosa admitted that the tide of femicide and violence against women has not receded. A mysterious Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide has reportedly been established and R80-million made available in grants to civil society. Are these just more empty promises?

Throughout the news coverage of the Covid-19 international disaster, civil society organisations have been featured doing all the good things that we expect of them – running soup kitchens, supporting the most vulnerable, providing psychosocial care to victims of violence and so forth.

However, in South Africa, civil society organisations also fulfil a different purpose – keeping a hawk’s eye on the work of the state. We don’t need to think hard to come up with a long list of examples of civil society organisations’ contribution to exposing #StateCapture, calling the state to account for its mismanagement of funds, and putting pressure on the president to act decisively in the fight against gender-based violence.

So how are the president and his government doing on gender-based violence? President Ramaphosa admitted in his latest address to the nation that the tide of femicide and violence against women has not receded. He said “violence is being unleashed on women and children with a brutality that defies comprehension. These rapists and killers walk among us. They are in our communities. They are our fathers, our brothers, our sons and our friends; violent men with utterly no regard for the sanctity of human life.”

But that doesn’t answer the question as to what the government is actually doing. In fact, decisive action is notable only by its absence. Let’s look at a case study in leadership on GBV from this administration – the Interim Steering Committee on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (ISC on GBVF). This committee was appointed after the Presidential Summit on GBVF came to an abrupt end in April 2020. The idea was that the ISC would be replaced by a more permanent structure after March 2020 – the mysterious Council on GBVF.

 The end of March came and went. Despite the posturing, no Council emerged.

On the afternoon of Thursday 11 June, civil society organisations received an emailed invitation to a webinar that would be hosted by the department the following Saturday (less than 48 hours later). The topic of the webinar would be the National Strategic Plan (NSP) on GBVF and the establishment of the Council. A lot of civil society members attended that four-hour webinar. It is important to say that the programme for the day and other documentation were only sent to participants late on Friday evening, so there was very little time to prepare for the webinar.

 It was then announced that the webinar would be used to come up with nomination criteria for the Council, a yet-to-be-defined body, and that nominations would be advertised on the following Monday.

This meant there was no time to consult with constituencies, no time to prepare any input. Basically, what was required was a rubber stamp of the process by civil society. This obviously caused outrage among civil society participants. Eventually, the programme director accepted that the process was rushed and they needed to allow more time for meaningful participation. More than two weeks after the webinar, civil societies that have attended have not received minutes from the meeting or any indication of the way forward.

The steering committee of the Multi-Party Women’s Caucus met this past Friday afternoon via a virtual platform to get feedback from the Department of Women on the NSP on GBVF and the appointment of the Council. At this meeting, the department claimed that civil society members have been engaged and are currently working with government departments to implement some of the pillars of the NSP. This is not only inaccurate, but also possibly deceitful.

 At the same meeting, the Minister of Women disappeared halfway through, even though her video feed was still active. The chairperson attempted to call her back to the meeting, but to no avail. Hoping that this parliamentary structure will hold the powers-that-be to account is apparently in vain.

There is also the issue of money. While the ISC was still in operation, an organisation called SABCOHA was appointed by the chairperson of the ISC to manage the new GBVF Fund. No one is really sure what is happening with the money in that fund. Under the oversight of the ISC, the National Development Agency also received R80-million to provide grants to organisations that work in the GBVF sector. The disbursements were supposed to be done by March 2020, but no grants have been allocated yet and it is unclear what happened to the R80-million.

The president said, “I want to assure the women and children of South Africa that our criminal justice system will remain focused on gender-based violence cases and that we can expect more arrests and more prosecutions against perpetrators to follow.”

For these words to be more than rhetoric, this government will have to keep the president’s promises. DM

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