Fund the fight! Show us the money – GBV activists

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s efforts to deal with the scourge of gender-based violence (GBV) are all talk with no action, say anti-GBV activists.

Yesterday, Ramaphosa and women, youth and persons with disabilities minister Maite Nkoane-Mashabane faced a tough crowd during the two-day Presidential Summit on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide in Midrand as non-profit organisations told the delegation, which included police minister Bheki Cele, that they were tired of government’s lip service.

Activists accused Ramaphosa of using the summit for pretend that he was serious about GBV when his actions showed he was not.

“We do not know why the president called us to a summit when he says he has been asking for monthly reports but he is not receiving these consistently. It tells us this is a government where people do as they please. What would be difficult for the president to demand that he gets reports he wants if he is as serious about what he himself calls a secondary pandemic?” asked Brenda Madumise-Pajibo, wise4afrika director.

“Fund the fight! Show us the money and show us the practicality of what you’re doing,” said Sihle Sibisi,  founder of the Kwanele Foundation.

“The next summit will come in four years from now and in that time, will Cyril Ramaphosa still be our president? Maybe a new president will come on board and scrap the National Strategic Plan and we’ll have to start from scratch.

“We’re being sabotaged by the very same people the president has deployed on the ground. It’s all good to have summits but after this what happens.

“Funding the fight has been a cry of NPOs on the ground for the longest time. I had expressed our pain that when they find NPOs that are radical and vocal against some of the injustices we are silenced or kicked out of programmes,” Sibisi said.

Women from across the country submitted a memorandum to Ramaphosa with 24 demands after the national shutdown protests in 2018.

This emanated following the death of 19-year-old Uyinene Mrwetyana. The protesters demanded that the government take a firmer stand on violence against women and children. 

Speaking yesterday, Ramaphosa conceded that the government hadn’t done enough and promised that “real money” would be set aside.

After the first summit in 2018, the government had committed to set aside R1.6bn to fund the National Strategic Plan (NSP). When questioned about what happened to the money, he later said national departments had been asked to trim their budgets in order to fund the NSP.

“Now that we have a proper council in terms of the law, the National Treasury will be able to set aside, on a separate basis, the money that will fund this fight.”

Rape survivor Candice Ludick, who was raped by her grandfather between the ages of five years old and 10, commended the summit.

“We have to plan for a future where we have solutions so we don’t keep having so many cases. It is a balancing act because you’ll hear so many saying that it’s just another talkshop and sometimes it does feel like it but we have to celebrate small wins," she said.

“All we want is to be believed because the justice system talks about innocent until proven guilty and victims and survivors are liars until we’re proven honest and the odds are really stacked against us because we have to enter this brutal justice system where we’re witnesses in our own cases,” Ludick said.

Lisa Vetten, GBV researcher attached to the University of Johannesburg, described the speech as “performative”.

“It was a formulaic speech thin in detail and action,” she said.

She was not impressed with Ramaphosa admitting that the state had failed GBV victims. “It does not help saying you acknowledge that the government is not doing well. What are you going to do about it?”

She was also unmoved by the president’s harping on the NPA having a 77% success rate in prosecuting gender-based-violence cases. “In 2013/14, which was a good year, the NPA put down 18% of [GBV] cases for prosecution. Of these, 12% resulted in convictions.

“In 2020/21, which was a bad year and taking into account Covid, we moved from 18% to 8%. Of these, only 6% resulted in convictions. So the 77% conviction rate must be seen as the NPA having put down only its strongest cases at the expense of those they find more challenging but equally deserving of justice.”

Vetten said there were many examples of individuals in the police and the court system who had done well to successfully prosecute GBV cases. She said the state would do well to learn from these and take the best practices and replicate them across the country.

The Gender Commission also took issue with the failure to create legislation to fight GBV as promised.

“One of the greatest setbacks is that the much-punted and hyped National Council on Gender-Based Violence (NCGBV) that was mooted to be in existence within six months of the declarations has never seen the light of the day to date. What we have now is the bill on the same before Parliament,” said Gender Commission spokesperson Javu Baloyi.

“There has not been a proper explanation regarding what happened to the R1.6bn that was earmarked for the work on GBVF. The role of the judicial system in fighting the scourge of GBVF has been brought into question. Government has been called out for paying lip service to the continual suffering of women and children in the country.”