WOMEN TO DELIVER ANTI-VIOLENCE PETITION TO PRESIDENT

LOBBY:Government urged to stop targeting of women

By Thuli Zungu

About 5 000 South African Women have signed a petition to be delivered to President Cyril Ramaphosa on the National Women’s Day, calling for action on gender-based violence against women in our country.

Lee-Anne Germanos, attorney and co-director at Embrace project, said, with the National Women’s Day looming, the country’s women had nothing to celebrate while fellow sisters were being maimed by South African men daily.

“So, in honour of our fallen sisters, and the 20 000 South African women who marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 for our freedom, on Monday, #wethewomenofsa calls on all women and our allies to protest instead of celebrating,” Germanos said.

“We protest because we have #nocauseforcelebration. We call on you to protest the lack of political will displayed in combatting GBVF, despite the introduction of new legislation, the Emergency Response Action Plan and the GBVF Response Fund,” she said, adding that the rate of gender-based violence in South Africa continued to soar.

“It is clear that, despite legislative reforms, and the Presidency’s Emergency Response Action Plan to address the violence, the South African government, and its institutions, lack the political will to reduce, let alone eradicate, the threat to the lives, and the enjoyment of life, of every South African woman and child,” Germanos said.

South Africa’s own Commission for Gender Equality confirmed this in its report released in April 2021. The following month, the UN’s Commission on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women found that, because of the extremely high-rate of domestic violence in South Africa, the SA government was in systematic violation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), she said.

“For that reason, we will be submitting our letter symbolically on 9 August 2021 – Women’s Day, the day that we celebrate the women’s march to the Union Buildings in 1956 when they too handed a petition to the then Head of State,” Germanos said.