Programme Director,
Gauteng MEC for Community Safety, Ms Faith Mazibuko,
National Commissioner of Police, General Riah Phiyega,
Secretary for Police, Ms J. Irish-Qhobosheane,
All senior government officials present,
Police Officers,
Civil Society Organisations,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am very sure that sceptics of this gathering themed: “Civilian Secretariat for Police, SAPS & Joint Gender Fund Dialogue: Improved Police Response towards safe, violent-free communities for women and girls”, would unfairly label this dialogue, as a rhetoric talk-shop.
This could not be far from the truth, for we all know that we have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, acquired through dialogue. Not through arguing, and definitely not through instructions. Our constitution was crafted and successfully adopted by all South Africans, through a multi-party and multi-sectoral negotiations and debate informed by the principle of dialogue.
Therefore, Programme Director, I support the overall of objective of this dialogue which states:
“The dialogue creates the space to build shared understandings, drawing on government and civil society perspectives that can feed into strengthening police response towards improving safety for women and girls in communities”.
Notwithstanding, I would still want to pose this critical question to the delegates here: “Don’t we have enough gender-based violence dialogue platforms already”? For instance, we have Inter-Ministerial committee on Causes of Gender-Based Violence, led by the Department of Social Development.
Then, we have the National Council on Gender-Based Violence led by the Deputy President, and Chaired by the Department of Women, Children and People with Disability. And, then of course, some National, Provincial and Local Government Departments have gender-focal points or desks.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am posing this question to show that dialogue is not always easy and straightforward, as one late Physicist David Bohm observed that, “a dialogue needs a higher social intelligence”.
This literally means that, individuals are not intelligent on their own, only through reasoning and working together as a collective, can different worldviews and fragmented ideals be consolidated into authentic conversations in search for a common ground.
My message to you today then is that, listening to each other is key to a real dialogue. All these different dialogue platforms on gender-based violence and women/girl safety must begin to organize themselves and to build stronger partnerships between them, through a structured dialogue. And, this is the only way we can develop a manifesto as a tool for a common framework to work together.
If core members of the IMC on Causes of Gender Based Violence and National Council on Gender Based Violence are not present at this workshop, I would be very worried. Their absence would mean then that this workshop is just a discussion, and not a dialogue.
We must remember that a dialogue can only happen when delegates trust and respect each other, suspend their judgments, and listen to all points of view and ideals. We need to trust all dialogue platforms with the same insight and common purpose of fostering safety for the most vulnerable groups in our society: women, children, the elderly and the disabled.
Programme Director, this dialogue has come at a very opportune time, for a number of reasons. 2013 is one of the extreme years that have seen an increasing scourge of violent and brutal abuse against our most vulnerable groups. And only through dialogue, will we be able to convince all South Africans that, the police alone can never solve this problem.
In fact, police can only enforce the rule of law against abuse, rape and molestation of children and women. But law enforcement is null and void without the necessary intelligence information from the community itself to apprehend these heinous criminals. For, rape, molestation, domestic violence and all other types of gender-based violence always happen in the deep dark corners of a community, of a family house, or an abandoned building.
Probably, one of the strategies to be considered in this dialogue is to find ways of reviving the traditional authority structures. Traditionally, the centrality of kinship, families and extended families/clans has had always a positive contribution to moral fiber of a society.
But this revival of a moral fiber of a society can only be possible if legacies left by apartheid are tackled in an honest manner. For, it is a fact that, there had been significant changes in family settings: geographic mobility to seek work; increase in maternal employment, segregation of neighbourhoods along multiple characteristics.
These changes have impacted the availability of parents/adults in homes; the amount of time dedicated to family activity, and the dissolution of the proverb: “my child is your child”. Consequently, many South Africans, especially those impacted by mobility due to long-distance employment; unemployment, lack of education and poverty, are at risk to all sorts of social ills (crime, substance abuse, and disease), because they are without a strong supportive family or other adult connections, and thus lead to unsafe and unhealthy behaviours.
Another strategy to be considered to create safe environment for children is to establish recreational activities and after-school programmes. The sad reality is that most South African parents, due to unemployment and poverty, do not have safe and supervised places for their children to go to after school on a regular basis. There is indeed a need for somewhere for children to go once they are forced to leave their schools.
Recreational places for children and other vulnerable groups, are critical as more dangers than ever lurk out there, just waiting to snatch the child who has given up and dropped out, the child who is underachieving, the child who is scared, the child who is alienated, the child who is bullied, the child who has no one to turn to, and the child who cannot get the skills he or she will need to get a job someday.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is obvious then that all stakeholders that are addressing gender-based violence and issues of safety for the most vulnerable groups must start to get smart and authentic when they talk to one another, as different risk factors are at play.
As stakeholders, we need to be able to overcome our differences, build meaning, and set directions together as government, as civil society, as communities and as peoples of South Africa. Indeed, together we can do more to fight the scourge of brutal violence against our most vulnerable groups.
I thank you all.
