South Africa is commemorating Women’s Month in August but the daily accounts of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) will need everyone’s hands on deck to stop ‘the GBVF pandemic’, Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille said on Tuesday.
Visiting Durban’s Kerr House, a 70-year-old institution that shelters GBVF victims, de Lille said the country needed “all men and women to stand together and speak up against the horrific violence perpetrated against our women and children each day.”
“Our women and children are the backbone and future of our country. They should be protected and respected by the very perpetrators who harm them,” de Lille said.
She added: “We simply must do more to restore the fabric of our country, to restore families by installing good values in our young boys, and having our men stand up and help other men in our society who need help.”
De Lille saluted the work that Kerr House was doing, which included the development of a programme targeted at boys and young men as well so that they grew up as violent-free men.
The programme provided the boys with an alternative model of behaviour aimed at giving them more positive choices in their relationships with women, and thereby saying “no” to crime, she said.
“To all women and men, do not keep quiet. Please speak up and help when you know of abuse happening in your extended family or in your community,” the minister said.
NM/jn/APA