Programme Director;
Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities;
Ministers;
Premiers;
Members of Provincial Executive Councils;
Distinguished Guests;
Ladies and gentlemen:
Thank you for inviting me to address you at the closing of the 16 Days of Activism on No Violence Against Women and Children. I consider this gathering to be a culmination of a national engagement for evaluating our progress in achieving zero violence against women and children for 365 days a year.
Today's meeting should serve as a reminder that the end of these 16 days is not the final destination in our efforts to fight violence and abuse against vulnerable groups; this is only the beginning of the reflective stages of our call to action for a non-violent society.
As we reflect on the success of our campaign, it is important that we send out a clear message to those who seek to prey on the disabled, women, children and the elderly, that we will not rest easy until justice is not only done but is also seen to be done.
It is indeed the time for all, especially men, to stand up and be counted amongst those who will not allow criminal perversion and violence to mar the social landscape of our society. We must do so because this scourge of violence slowly threatens to deplete what is left of the moral fibre of our society.
No normal society can function when children cannot be left alone with their brothers, uncles or fathers. We commend men-led social formations against gender violence and believe that we can change the attitudes of the majority of men in society and enlist them as paragons of leadership in the battle against violence and abuse.
Embedded in these attitudes are commitments to narrow traditional and out-dated cultural practices that arrogate to men the entitlement to treat women and children as objects for possession. Be that as it may, I am convinced that there is a growing number of men who are responsible fathers and husbands. It is to them that we call to action and look to in order to teach others that a non-sexist world is achievable.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We live in a society that is severely challenged by a lack of opportunities, unemployment, poverty and inequity. The inability of rural and poor women to fend for themselves also keeps them locked up in a cycle of abuse because of their dependence on men for sustenance. We must therefore seek to strengthen our hand in trying to reduce poverty through education and other economic development initiatives.
We must also address other negative guises of tradition that seek to pre-determine the inferior social standing of women. While we must preserve and protect our traditions we must do so with the forward thinking of the type of society we live in today and what we want it to be in the future. The fight against violence and changing stereotypes is also one of the most important pillars in our fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS for women who cannot negotiate safe sex.
Programme director,
The challenges that we face are many and varied but I am convinced that we have the right policies and legislation in place to help us in our fight against violence on women and children. Through the promulgation of the Domestic Violence Act, the Children's Act and the Sexual Offences and Related Matters' Act, we have made significant progress in protecting those who suffer from domestic abuse. However the statistics on gender-based violence continue to show a worrying increase in violent crime against women.
While there has been a reduction in the prevalence of other crimes, we remain deeply concerned that, crime against vulnerable groups, especially children under the age of 15 continues to grow. One thing is clear: children are our tomorrow; investing in their protection, health and education is to stake a claim in our future as a nation.
The best way to evaluate the future of any society is to begin with an assessment of the quality of life of its children. This realisation leaves all of us with a weighty responsibility to strengthen social systems as we go along until they become responsive enough to eliminate this scourge altogether.
To this end our Bill of Rights advices us that 'children have the right to be protected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse or degradation.'
This is a universally sound principle that we will strive to live by. Our task is to do all we can to ensure that we improve the implementation of legislation and the strategies to ensure humane and ideal social conditions for our children.
We are also concerned at the increasing number of incidents and reported cases of violence perpetrated against women and girls in the name of the so-called corrective rape, an illusion based on male chauvinism.
In this regard, let us invoke our Constitution once again, that: 'no person may unfairly discriminate, directly or indirectly, against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.'
Therefore we need to continue to communicate that rape is rape, be it in a marriage, relationship or any other situation.
Programme director,
The exercise we are engaging in now is part of efforts to strife for and contribute towards world peace by eradicating home-based gender violence.
We are hopeful that the message that we have sought to communicate over this time will reach out to and involve more men, boys, faith-based organisations, traditional leaders, and other key partners in this work towards building a more just and peaceful world.
In this regard we are working closer with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to communicate the message that the success of charitable efforts to maintain world peace must start in the home.
Government believes that, if properly communicated and widely understood, these measures will truly strengthen its on-going sectoral interventions and the different civil society members in curbing the scourge of gender based violence and ensure that there is 365 violence free days.
I wish to thank you all for participating and supporting the campaign over the last 16 days and remain optimistic that this campaign will be mainstreamed into broader government programmes so that finally it becomes a lived reality that expresses itself in our daily consciousness as individuals.
I thank you!
