Malusi educates men and boys about gender issues in South Africa. He came to this work as a result of losing access to his young daughter. When he and her mother broke up, he was prevented from seeing her and slid into a pattern of drinking and drug use. Eventually, Malusi saw that his only hope of having a relationship with his daughter was to let go of self-hatred and forge a new and healthy life for himself. Here he is relating his story:
When his father became ill, Zondi was unexpectedly asked to return to his village and take over the position of Inkosi or chief. Although he was nervous at first, Inkosi Zondi has been able to address problems facing women, children and youth in his community. By sharing a story about a small bird, he explains that while he cannot fix the entire world, he knows that he can make an important difference in his community. He shares his inspirational story here:
In post-conflict settings men often experience a loss of power coupled with unemployment. To reinstate their power, some become abusive to their partners and families. It is against this backdrop that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Sudan, together with the Sudanese government decided to adapt Sonke’s One Man Can Campaign to the Sudanese context.
Since its adaptation in 2010, over 100 000 people are estimated to have directly or indirectly benefitted from the programme. In addition, over 500 people have been trained to work as One Man Can facilitators and peer educators. A network of 33 organisations, led by Zenab for Women in Development, is disseminating One Man Can messages across Sudan, with support from Sonke’s MenEngage Africa network.
This implementation of Sonke’s One Man Campaign in post-conflict Sudan is yielding positive results with Sudanese men challenging and changing their political, cultural and religious beliefs around gender-based violence (GBV) and abuse in families. Women have supported men’s involvement in this campaign, and both men and women are openly discussing their traditions, cultural practices and barriers, and perspectives of women’s roles in the family and society. This beautifully shot video from UNDP documents this project:
Sonke Gender Justice, Treatment Action Campaign, United Front, People’s Health Movement and other civil organisations marched to parliament in support of TAC, to demand attention and call upon MPs and the government to take drastic measures to fight TB and improve treatment for people suffering from TB.
[Photographs by Sivu Nomana]
Without access to clean water, Melikhaya worries that his mother will not be able to recover from her illness. He also worries that his siblings may get sick from the food he prepares with contaminated water.
Melikhaya’s story (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0NTf4XDTCo) is a plea to government to provide clean, running water to all people living in South Africa who struggle without it every day.
[Melikhaya’s story is part of a series of digital stories on “Young People Speak Out”, produced in collaboration with Sonke Gender Justice and the Centre for Digital Storytelling’s (http://storycenter.org/) Silence Speaks Out project (www.silencespeaks.org) which uses participatory media, popular education and testimonial practices to support the telling and witnessing of stories that all too often remain untold and unheard. This digital story seeks to enable young people and adults affected by HIV and AIDS to share their stories in order to deepen existing conversations about HIV and AIDS as well as empower citizen storytellers and their communities).Melikhaya’s story is part of a series of digital stories on “Young People Speak Out”, produced in collaboration with Sonke Gender Justice and the Centre for Digital Storytelling’s (http://storycenter.org/) Silence Speaks Out project (www.silencespeaks.org) which uses participatory media, popular education and testimonial practices to support the telling and witnessing of stories that all too often remain untold and unheard.]
On Friday, Sonke’s Dumisani Rebombo participated in an Alliance Francaise Pretoria and High Commission of Canada film screening of POLYTECHNIQUE and a discussion “Violence Against Women Knows No Boundaries… How do we stop it?)
Here is Dumisani with fellow discussion panellists Nicola Christofides from University of Witwatersrand and Roseline Engelbrecht from Women in Farms.
Wits – University of the Witwatersrand
[CP]
Today and tomorrow, Sonke’s International Programmes and Networks Manager, Itumeleng Komanyane joins the United Nations Trust Fund (UNTF) in Washington DC at the United States Congress to meet with Congressional and Senate staffers and talk about UNTF’s “Engaging Men to Strengthen the Implementation of GBV Laws” project. Sonke and MenEngage Africa (which Sonke co-cordinates) worked with UNTF on this project in Kenya, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.
You can read the project review here:
https://genderjustice.org.za/publication/menengage-tri-country-project-review/
Nombasa is a teenage girl growing up in the rural Eastern Cape who aspires to become a gynaecologist. She dreams that one day her village will be safe for girls and women, but she wonders whether such dreams can come true in a community where women and girls are rarely afforded an opportunity to flourish, and where crime, drugs and violence threaten the hopes and dreams of young girls like herself. This is her story.
[Nombasa’s story is part of a series of digital stories on “Gender and Human Rights”, produced in collaboration between Sonke and the Center for Digital Storytelling’s (http://storycenter.org/) Silence Speaks project (www.silencespeaks.org) which uses participatory media, popular education, and testimonial practices to support the telling and witnessing of stories that all too often remain untold and unheard. This Gender and Human Rights digital story series seeks to enable young people and adults affected by violence and HIV and AIDS to share their stories in order to deepen existing conversations about gender norms, gender-based violence (GBV) and health, as well as empower citizen storytellers and their communities.]
Sonke’s delegation in NYC at the March for Gender Equality (going on right now) on International Women’s Day with UN Women – We’re calling on the South African government to fund a national plan to end gender-based violence NOW!
#NSPNOW
[CP]
If you’re in or near New York City, join Sonke Gender Justice at The March for Gender Equality! We’ll be calling on the South African Government to finally develop, fund and implement a long overdue National Plan to End GBV.
Will our government listen? Or will more lip service and empty promises ensue, despite the human collateral that builds up every single day that the government fails to meaningfully act?
With current world trends, gender equality won’t be a reality for 80 years – not good enough! We’re calling on global leaders to step it up to achieve equity and equality by 2030!
No more gender-based violence, no more discrimination, no more glass ceiling, no more unequal pay for equal work, no more barriers to education for girls, no more sexist laws, no more shooting or killing those who stand up for gender equality, no more patriarchal oppression, no more child brides, no more sexual assault, no more harassment, no more rape in conflict, no more child abduction, no more forgetting about “bring back our girls” (almost a year later!), no more “corrective rape”, no more homo-or-transphobia, no more child abuse, no more sex worker abuse, no more blocking women’s access to termination of pregnancy and reproductive health rights, no more HIV and AIDS, no more domestic violence, no more police inaction, no more intimate-partner murder, no more getting away with murder, rape and abuse, no more inequality!
Globally, Sonke is calling for a standalone gender goal in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)/Post 2015 Global Agenda and for gender transformation and equality to be integrated into all of the SDGs!
Nationally, we’re calling for a comprehensive strategic plan, developed in consultation with South African civil society that is funded, that has measures for accountability, that is multisectoral and that properly addresses prevention! Without it, between now and 2030, rapes will occur in the millions, and intimate partner murders in the many thousands! And every single year, South Africa’s GDP will also lose about 1% (at current estimates).
Lip service is not good enough!
Join us to march for: Planet 50-50 by 2030 – Step It Up!
March from 2:30-5pm, March 8, 2015
Starts 47th and 1st, goes to Times Square
March organised by UN WOMEN and others. Look for the #Sonke Gender Justice banners and t-shirts and come march with us!
If you’re not in NYC, join our and the GBV NSP Campaign Partners’ call for a GBV National Plan by signing our petition: tinyurl.com/gbvplan
By Czerina Patel, Sonke Communications
czerina@genderjustice.org.za
www.genderjustice.org.za
twitter/sonketogether
FB: SonkeGenderJusticeNGO
#NSPNOW
[CP]
Tomorrow is International Women’s Day. If you’re in or near New York City, join Sonke at The March for Gender Equality! We’ll be calling on the South African Government to finally develop, fund and implement a long overdue National Plan to End GBV. Will our government listen?
With current trends, gender equality won’t be a reality for 80 years – not good enough! We’re calling on global leaders to step it up to achieve equity and equality by 2030!
We’re also calling for a standalone gender goal in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and for gender transformation and equality to be integrated into all of the SDGs!
Planet 50-50 by 2030 – Step It Up!
March from 2:30-5pm
Starts 47th and 1st, goes to Times Square
March organised by UN WOMEN and others. Look for the #Sonke Gender Justice banners and t-shirts and come march with us!
[CP]
The problem of gender inequality and gender-based violence (GBV) cuts across class, religion, geographical location, race and ethnicity. All over the world, there are numerous campaigns, projects and programmes that strive to bring about gender justice and human rights in a variety of affected communities. Working in the African context, and particularly in poorer communities and in developing countries, poverty and the need to access resources can sometimes be an impediment to gender transformation.
On the 13th of February 2015, Sonke Gender Justice (Sonke) hosted a close out meeting of the United Nations Trust Fund (UNTF) project which aimed to shift policy on GBV prevention laws and policies and raise awareness of these in Kenya, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. In sum, the project was hugely successful at both the policy level and in terms of behaviour change within communities. As part of the close-out process, partners from all three countries gathered together to reflect on some of the shared successes and collective struggles in conducting the work. Discussions became passionate when talking about the impact money and resources have on implementation.
Catherine Githae, Project co-ordinator in Kenya, gave a presentation to representatives from these countries on some of the financial challenges of community engagement in meeting project aims. In addition to having to pay the media to come and cover stories and profile these in newspapers and on television, those working in the community also require a stipend for the time and efforts they have invested.
“When we select Community Change Agents, we have to make sure that their transport costs are covered and that they receive some money for their work, otherwise they cannot attend some of the meetings or visit affected families”, Catherine shared. “And they do have to receive something for their efforts, but now that the project is closing, the question of sustainability comes up,” she continued.
Community Change Agents (CCAs) were a central part of the UNTF project because they worked tirelessly to raise awareness on GBV laws with members of their community, often being called upon at night to handle disputes. Even though the CCAs work with passion and went beyond their targets in all three countries, in a few communities, drop out is expected because CCAs are not able to continue the work without this stipend which is used to support their families. Many of the CCAs are unemployed.
This poses a critical challenge for work in poorer communities, especially when projects are funded by donors and not governments thereby limiting sustainability. Projects bring communities all kinds of resources such as money, knowledge and skills, as well as access to opportunities for employment due to up-skilling, and through newly accessed networks. At the meeting, partners questioned and rigorously debated how this reality affects the success of projects beyond the funded-phase of its implementation and more importantly, how the values that are created are not lost when role models are no longer as active.
The resource costs of working with communities were also experienced in the engagement with policy makers, government representatives and even those belonging to regional bodies like the African Union (AU). Bafana Khumalo of Sonke Gender Justice (Sonke) explained the difficulties of working with high level bodies such as the AU.
“There are very different protocols to be observed when engaging high level people such as representatives of the AU. To get them to attend meetings, you have to make sure that you pay their per diems, some of them have to fly business class, and this is challenging for civil society who have limited budgets with clear donor restrictions.”
For partners gathered for this close-out meeting some clear questions emerged; How do we work in poorer communities in such a way that the work is sustained once implementing partners have left and there is no funding? Is there a way we can work with policy makers and regional bodies so that they do not have to be financially supported to attend meetings or support work that is ultimately for the benefit of this continent and fits within their mandate, roles and obligations?
As international donor funding continues to dwindle, civil society must innovate and find ways of inspiring change in communities while confronting poverty which is often the basis of GBV and other social ills. Civil society must also lobby government and regional bodies to work collaboratively and fulfil their mandates without supporting a system which entices them to do so. As Jean-Claude Butera of Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre (RWAMREC) stated “government needs to be engaged and included for sustainability”. It is indeed time that African governments put more funds towards realising the positive social changes which they have been tasked to create on the continent.
Sonke Gender Justice is in the process of closing out the tri-nation United Nations Trust Fund (UNTF) project that has put funds towards ending gender-based violence (GBV) in Rwanda, Kenya and Sierra Leone. The team started out in Rwanda on the 9th of February and is currently in Nairobi evaluating the successes and lessons learnt during project implementation in this country. What stands out from the feedback is the value and importance that implementers placed on capacity building in the collective struggle to end GBV in Africa.
Since 2013, MenEngage Kenya (MenKen), a body of organisations that form part of the MenEngage Africa Network, has been implementing the UNTF funded project to end GBV in Kenya. One of the project’s aims has been centred on policy advocacy – working with policy-makers and government to ensure that GBV laws and policies include provisions to engage men and boys in prevention programmes as well as ensure protection for women and girls who are most affected. To do this, Sonke Gender Justice, UNWOMEN and many other partners have conducted numerous capacity building training programmes to increase the skills and knowledge of network members doing advocacy work in the policy environment.
To achieve this project objective, it was important to ensure that MenKen as implementing partners, were able to examine relevant existing policies and laws, identify gaps and, ultimately, provide language on men’s roles and responsibilities that was to be captured in a number of policy documents. Once this was achieved, MenKen was then able to lobby parliamentarians to publicly speak about the many forms of GBV men experience and push for this to be recognised in pending legislation related to domestic violence.
Project co-ordinator, Catherine Githae said “we have been working closely with MPs and male parliamentarians advocating for them to push for the passage of the Protection Against Domestic Violence Bill along with many other civil society partners. This was achieved also through our partnership with Sonke.”
Vincent Magero, Finance Manager at the Movement of Men Against AIDS in Kenya (MMAAK), implementing partner and member of MenKen reiterated this. “Sonke really gave us a lot of partner support. We really got capacity building – not only on the content – but also on processes and systems that needed to be put in place so that we function better and do the work,” he said.
Magero further explained that sharing of skills by training implementing countries and, thereby, capacitating them has been transformative not only for the growth of the organisations doing the work, but in using the newly acquired knowledge to achieve its goal towards making sure good policies and laws on GBV are developed and that men are not left behind in these efforts.
Photos from Sonke intern Seda Tan capture our colleagues doing our part to march and call for the national plan on #GBV
June 15 marks the fourth Father’s Day I’ll spend without my dad. He died in January 2011, which means that, for me, the day most people get together to celebrate their fathers has become a poignant reminder that he is no longer with us.
The first few years after his death were incredibly hard. But, this year, as I look at the advertisements for shaving cream and cologne, I am no longer filled with overwhelming sadness. Instead, I will be celebrating the wonderful father that I had and reflecting on a life well lived.
Goodness knows, my dad was an expert at living well. To this day, I haven’t come across another human being who lived with such gusto. My father had the fantastic quality of making the most mundane activities seem like adventures.
For as long as I can remember, a hilarious afternoon ritual would unfold in our kitchen. My father would begin: “Tanya, please make me a cup of tea, but do it properly! First warm my mug with hot water, then add milk and the tea bag and pop it into the microwave before you add hot water.”
While I laboured to make the world’s best cup of tea, my dad would begin laying an array of cakes and buns on the table. We would sit together at the table and he would eat as though it was the first time he’d ever tasted such confectionery.
This is how I recall my father: a big man, sitting at our kitchen table, drinking tea and gleefully stuffing delicious food into his mouth.
When I describe my dad to friends and colleagues, when I speak of the many adventures we undertook as a family, a strange silence usually settles in the room.
What typically starts off as a jovial account of fishing trips and recollections of his fart jokes soon gives way to a deeper discussion about absence and longing.
Over time, I have come to realise that the relationship I had with my father was rare, because so many fathers are absent, or angry, or in and out of their children’s lives.
We place huge emphasis on the value and importance of mothers. Hardly an acceptance speech, a dedication in a book, or a tale of overcoming odds fails to contain the phrase “I couldn’t have done this without my mother” or words to that effect. And so it should be.
Mothers, or women who mother, are instrumental to the functioning of society; they play an important role in the upbringing of children. Women do most of society’s nurturing and caring, often under the toughest conditions.
But it isn’t the job of women to do this alone. Indeed, their continued roles as the sole carers in many families buttresses the idea that this is the “natural order” of things. This idea – that women are caring and men are not – absolves men from being positive and engaged fathers. Though many wonderful people have been raised in single-mother households, we can’t continue to believe that the absence of good fathers in children’s lives is fine as long as mother is there.
Thankfully, there are increasing numbers of men who do not shy away from being engaged fathers. It isn’t an easy journey. Men in our society are not always raised to be good communicators, or to be in touch with their feelings.
Dealing with the mundane administrative chores associated with changing nappies and cleaning bottles isn’t fun, especially when you have been raised to believe that they aren’t really part of your job description. But all of these are part of the journey of fatherhood.
You don’t get the graduation speech from your daughter saying, “This wouldn’t have been possible without my dad” if you haven’t put in the emotional work.
My father loved me fully, through the grit and wonder of my own childhood. His love and devotion, his vulnerability and humour – these have made me the woman I am today. It isn’t a coincidence that I spend my working days advocating a world in which more men are good fathers.
I grew up knowing that a model of manhood that encourages men to be emotionally engaged and to display love is not only possible – it’s already here. The job ahead is to pass it on and make it the norm rather than the exception.
I was lucky to experience my father’s love because, even now, in his absence, it propels me onwards. Happy Father’s Day, daddy!
Thank you.
Today, on June 20th, the world celebrates World Refugee Day. In Cape Town, civil society organisations and artists from all over the world gathered to honour the courage and strength of the millions of men, women and children who fled their homes under threat of persecution. About a hundred people attended the event which was organized by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs, with collaboration by Sonke Gender Justice (“Sonke”).
According to a UNHCR report, there are more than 50 million refugees in the world, the highest number since World War II, and 65,000 in South Africa alone. Refugees in South Africa come from countries all over Africa, including Zimbabwe, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo in search of freedom from violence and oppression. They often face challenges of integration here, and some have been the targets of xenophobia. The event today highlighted the fact that despite these formidable obstacles, many refugees have made extraordinary contributions to South Africa as musicians, designers, writers, public servants and activists.
The event featured runway shows displaying the collections of refugee designers — Rea’Nubia, Thread of Good Hope, Prosperity Fashion and Shwe-Shwe. Inspired by a variety of African traditional designs, the collections were well-received by attendees. The crowd cheered as the models – young African women of all shapes and sizes – walked down the runway. Many of the designs evoked the national origins of their designers. “We want women to wear clothes they identify with,” the announcer said as she introduced the collection of Patricia Matereure, a Zimbabwean refugee who had begun her design business with one sewing machine.
Several refugees, including human rights activist Abdillahi Ahmed Mohamed who works in Sonke’s Refugee Health and Rights programme, told their stories. Abdillahi recounted how he fled Somalia and was able to find refuge in South Africa. He explained that here he could pursue an education, and also help other refugees have better lives. Others spoke not only about the difficulties of being a refugee, but also of the persistence and resilience that comes along with it. One woman urged her fellow refugees not to “sit and feel sorry” for themselves but to take part in their new communities. An Eritrean refugee said that refugee students were “very serious students” and spoke with pride about the academic accomplishments of his children.
Jackie Mckay, the Deputy Director General of Immigration Services at the Department of Home Affairs, Shirley Gunn from the Human Rights Media Centre and Patrick Kawuma-Male from the UNHCR praised the courage and fortitude of refugees and emphasized the importance of an integrated South Africa. “Their stories is [sic] our stories,” Kawuma-Male declared to general applause.
Sonke is at the “Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict” in London – it is described as the largest ever gathering on this subject. Today, together with Promundo-US, we launch or new IMAGES study in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which reveals high levels of gender-based violence, as well as the existence of ongoing effects of conflict on couple and family relations. This survey, carried out with 1,500 men and women in eastern DRC, found that 22% of women were forced to have sex or were raped as part of the conflict there, as were some 10% of men. In addition, more than 50% of women had experienced sexual violence from a husband or male partner. Nearly a third of women and men reported an unwanted sexual experience as children:
If you’re at the Summit, join us at our events, or our booth. Here’s who, where, when and what:
South Africa has just gone to the polls for the fifth time since 1994. In the build-up to what many have described as the most important election since, significant attention was paid to the kind of country South Africans want to live in. There was talk of better education, more focus on employment creation, better opportunities, less corruption. Not much attention was paid to party strategies for reducing sexual, interpersonal and community violence or for protecting and promoting the rights of children.
In our view, these are two of the most important issues that parties should have plans for addressing. Be that as it may, once the brouhaha around the election subsides, the fourth Amendment to the Children’s Act, which is ready and waiting, will commence its journey through the parliamentary process. In its current form, it contains a clause prohibiting corporal punishment in the home.
People in favour of hitting children often claim that “there is so much violence in our society; if corporal punishment in the home is prohibited, it will get even worse – look what’s happened in countries that have banned it, like the UK and the USA”.
It’s worth noting that neither the UK nor the USA has prohibited corporal punishment in the home, and the USA is certainly one of the most violent places in the world. So far, 37 countries have banned corporal punishment in all settings. These include countries like Sweden (the first to do so), the Netherlands, New Zealand and 5 African countries – hardly countries over-run by ill-disciplined adults.
There are many reasons to prohibit corporal punishment of children. Children are smaller and emotionally more vulnerable than adults. Children deserve at least the same protection as adults. Beating children violates their rights to physical integrity and to freedom from fear, humiliation and degradation.
But the most compelling argument against physical punishment must relate to our understanding of the kind of society we want to live in, and how we create that society.
South Africa is an extraordinarily violent society. Our levels of sexual, interpersonal, family and community violence are among the highest in the world. And most crimes of violence in South Africa are perpetrated by a person known to the victim.
The South African Police Service (SAPS), among others, has frequently pointed out the responsibility of all stake-holders for bringing down South Africa’s high violent crime rate. They have highlighted that better cooperation between and within spheres of government is needed, and emphasised the role of factors like forced removals, alcohol and substance abuse, and poverty as drivers of crime. All those things need attention if we are to become the kind of society we sensed was possible in the heady days after our first democratic elections.
But we have to do more than that as we move into our third decade of democracy and respect for the human rights of all. We need to take a long, hard look at child-rearing practices that feed and support the violence that affects all our lives, every day.
We need to ask: What kind of adults would we like our children to become? It seems to me we would want adults who are physically and emotionally healthy, intellectually capable, and self-disciplined – able to lead good and productive lives, to sustain themselves and help sustain our hard-won democracy.
The proposed Amendment to the Children’s Act does not advocate that we abandon discipline of children. It supports a different approach to discipline that inculcates values of non-violence, self-discipline and a respect for the human rights of others.
What do we teach our children when we hit them? That it is OK to impose your will on someone else; that they have no say or rights or dignity; that bigger, stronger people are entitled to hurt those who are smaller and weaker. Are these not some of the very things that are wrong in our country? When we defend the ‘right’ of parents to beat their children, when we try to differentiate ‘reasonable physical punishment’ from abuse, and when we insist we have a god-given right to raise the next generation in the shadow of physical punishment, then we ignore the consequences of these methods of raising children.
Objectively, what do we know about the consequences of corporal punishment of children?
Studies on the effects of spanking and corporal punishment over the last 50 years have shown that spanking sometimes works in the short-term –but that non-violent methods of discipline work just as well.
Furthermore, the long-term consequences of corporal punishment are far from positive. Five studies conducted since 1997 provide evidence that on average, the behaviour of the children of parents who spanked them got worse. There was a strong association between corporal punishment and children’s aggression and anti-social behaviour.
In a landmark study, Elizabeth Gershoff found that parental corporal punishment was associated with:
Corporal punishment was associated with just one desirable behaviour: increased immediate compliance.
The Children’s Amendment Bill gives us an unprecedented opportunity to begin to build a non-violent future in our violence-torn country. Let’s not blow it. Let us ensure this Bill is passed into law. Let us – as parents, families, teachers, communities, government and society at large – begin to create the kind of childhood that is the right of every child and that underpins our shared right to live in a peaceable, just society.
Carol Bower is a consultant at Sonke Gender Justice she is currently working on a project called MenCare: South Africa Promotion of Positive Discipline Campaign and Wessel van der Berg is a programme manager at Sonke Gender Justice.
Sonke’s Board Chair Kopano Ratele in front of an image photographer Jodi Bieber took of him as part of a series of work examining masculinities. The photograph is part of a solo exhibition QUIET, currently on show at the Goodman Gallery. Kopano told an audience at a dialogue on “Masculinity, Power, Equality and Justice” at the gallery that he was trying to get comfortable with seeing his image in the gallery and that he wondered what people, and specifically his students, would say about it.
Sonke’s Mbuyiselo Botha, who also participated in the dialogue admitted that he had “chickened out” of the artist’s invitation to pose and said this speaks to the difficulty that men in power encounter when challenged to be seen in more exposed and vulnerable moments and spaces.
Sisonke Msimang and Vuyiseka Dubula, members of Sonke’s advocacy and accountability team in action at today’s #DMGathering.
Considering only 37% of intimate partner female homicides in South Africa lead to conviction, Oscar Pistorius facing sentencing today is in the minority of killers of women in SA.
A 2004 MRC study showed the average sentence for perpetrators of intimate partner femicide was 10.7 years. Since Pistorius was only found guilty of culpable homicide, his sentence is likely to be shorter.
There was a huge decrease in gun related homicides of women in South Africa between 1999 & 2009, likely due largely to gun control legislation. The Medical Research Council (MRC) found that 529 fewer women were killed by guns in SA in 2009 versus in 1999. Intimate partner femicide went from four per day to three per day. The MRC studies were respectively called Every Six Hours & Every Eight Hours.
Jody Williams of Nobel Women’s Initiative – one of Sonke Gender Justice’s partners – told the Cape Argus that her and other Laureates’ refusal to attend the Nobel Prize Summit in Cape Town if the Dalai Lama was not given a visa to attend would “send a message that the South African government’s appalling treatment of the Dalai Lama will not go unchallenged”:
http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/laureate-slams-sa-over-dalai-lama-row-1.1756813
Since then, the Nobel Summit was cancelled just days before it was to begin tomorrow, and will instead be held in another country at a later date.
Avaaz.org has a petition online asking The Presidency of the Republic of South Africa to change the stubborn position South Africa has held on this for the past half decade, having refused to give his Holiness the Dalai Lama a visa on three occasions.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/dalai_lama_sa_2014/?beTaecb&v=47428
Today, staff from Sonke Gender Justice are at a meeting organised by the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) in response to complaints lodged by the men’s organisations Isikhalo Samadoda and the Social Imbalance Movement.
The organisations sent letters of complaint to both the CGE and the Department of Justice and Correctional Services claiming that women’s rights are attained at the expense of men and that women have too many rights in South Africa. Of course this is not the reality in South Africa where the struggle for women to achieve equality with men is still underway, and where women are greatly marginalised in many areas of society. Further, no country in the world can boast paying women the same as men for the same work – worldwide, women still earn between 10-30% less than men. In a country like South Africa where there is still deep patriarchy in communities and institutions, where there are an estimated more than a million rapes per year, and where more than a thousand women are killed at the hands of “intimate partners”, it is especially harmful to say that women share the same rights and privileges as men do, nevermind to suggest that they share more.
Sonke’s Patrick Godana and Nokhwezi Hoboyi are at the CGE meeting to ensure that women’s rights are not infringed upon and to counter the accusations being made by complainants.
Photos from Sonke’s Patrick Godana
Sonke celebrates the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize: the youngest recipient ever, Malala Yousafzai, who championed the right for girls to be educated in Pakistan and continues to have threats made against her from the Taliban who shot her in the head for her activism on behalf of girl students, and Kailash Satyarthi of India who has worked to end child labor and free children from trafficking. Both activists are working towards the same vision as Sonke – a world in which women, men and children can enjoy equitable, peaceful and healthy relationships and engagement in the world. We congratulate both winners and applaud them for their important and impactful activism and Nobel Prize for their powerful selection!
BERLIN — Reaching across gulfs of age, gender, faith, nationality and even international celebrity, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2014 peace prize on Friday to Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi of India, joining a teenage Pakistani known around the world with an Indian veteran of campaigns to end child labor and free children from trafficking.
Ms. Yousafzai, 17, is the youngest recipient of the prize since it was created in 1901. Mr. Satyarthi is 60. The $1.1 million prize is to be divided equally between them.
The awards were announced in Oslo by Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee’s chairman, who said: “The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.”
“Children must go to school and not be financially exploited,” Mr. Jagland said. “It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the rights of children and young people be respected. In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation.”
“Showing great personal courage, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi’s tradition, has headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain,” Mr. Jagland said. “He has also contributed to the development of important international conventions on children’s rights.”
Despite his works, Mr. Satyarthi is not nearly so widely known as Ms. Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for campaigning on behalf of girls’ education in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. She was 15 at the time. Since then, she has become a global emblem of her struggle, celebrated on television and publishing a memoir.
She “has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations,” Mr. Jagland said. “This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle, she has become a leading spokesperson for girls’ rights to education.”
Underscoring the hostilities the Nobel committee seemed to wish to ease, troops from Pakistan and India had exchanged artillery and machine-gun fire across their disputed Himalayan border in the days before the announcement. The most recent eruption of fighting has so far killed 11 Pakistani and eight Indian villagers, but by Friday, a lull had set in, news reports said.
In the speculation that invariably precedes the announcement of the award, Ms. Yousafzai had been a favorite for two successive years. This year, some forecasters spoke of Pope Francis, and others said it was likely the committee would withhold the prize, as it last did during the Vietnam War in 1972 because the global horizon seemed so scarred by conflict.
The nomination of Ms. Yousafzai, however, seemed in part to be intended as an inspirational message, offering a counterpoint to conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
Last year, Ms. Yousafzai won several European awards and published a memoir of her experiences, “I Am Malala.” The title echoed the circumstances of her shooting. When the Taliban gunman boarded her bus, he called out, “Who is Malala?” As she noted in an interview last year, her voice is now heard “in every corner of the world.”
British news reports said Ms. Yousafzai was at school in Birmingham, England, where she has lived since being treated for her gunshot wounds, when the prize was announced and was taken out of her class to be informed of the award.
In many ways, her story has come to symbolize the trauma of modern Pakistan, as the nuclear-armed nation has struggled to reconcile the opposing forces of violent Islamism and those who envision a progressive, forward-facing future for their country.
Six days after the shooting, she was airlifted to a specialized hospital in Birmingham.
The Taliban were the reason that Ms. Yousafzai had come to public prominence. She wrote a blog in 2009 that detailed life in the Swat Valley under Taliban rule, at a time when bearded fighters, armed with Kalashnikovs, had terrorized the valley’s residents and made particular efforts to shut schools where girls were being educated.
After the Taliban were expelled from Swat, Ms. Yousafzai went on to become a national media figure. Ms. Yousafzai spoke passionately about the need for peace and education for girls on television programs. She was encouraged by her schoolmaster father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who had nurtured his daughter as an outspoken advocate from an early age.
But that advocacy earned the wrath of the Taliban, which convened a secret meeting to plan her assassination.
In the months after her recovery, Ms. Yousafzai took the first steps toward establishing her global celebrity. She met with a President Obama and his family in the White House and was lionized by a host of celebrities.
Back in Pakistan, however, things were less clear. Conservative Pakistanis spread malicious stories claiming that Ms. Yousafzai’s plight had been exaggerated by a gullible Western news media, or that she was somehow in the employment of American intelligence. The Taliban vowed to redouble their efforts to assassinate the schoolgirl should she ever return to the country.
The conspiracy theories reflected broader tensions between Pakistan and the United States. Although most Pakistanis prize education, and a minority sympathizes with the Taliban, the rush by Western leaders to heap praise on Ms. Yousafzai was seen by many as a rebuke of Pakistan at a time of painful relations with the United States.
For all that, news of the Nobel Prize on Friday inspired jubilation and well-wishers in the Swat Valley, who spilled onto the streets and distribute sweets in a traditional celebration.
“We have no words to express our feelings,” said Ahmad Shah, a family friend, speaking by phone from Mingora, the main town in the region. “Her efforts have been recognized by the world with this great prize. This is a victory for the people of Swat and of Pakistan.”
Mr. Shah said he had spoken to Ms. Yousafzai’s exiled father, who had called from England to gauge the reaction in the area.
For months after the attack on Ms. Yousafzai, some residents criticized the schoolgirl, fearing publicity around her case would invite further Taliban attacks. But now, Mr. Shah said he told Mr. Yousafzai by phone, “even those who were opposing Malala are happy.”
Some residents, however, clung to the conspiracy theories that have dogged Ms. Yousafzai’s reputation in Pakistan. “Her shooting was a ready-made drama that was created by foreign powers,” said Ghulam Farooq, the editor of a small local newspaper. “She has no real role in this Swat conflict.”
In India, Mr. Satyarthi, a former engineer, has long been associated with the struggle to free bonded laborers, some born into their condition and others lured into servitude. For decades, he has sought to rid India of child slavery and has liberated more than 75,000 bonded and child laborers in the country.
Mr. Satyarthi began working for children’s rights in 1980 as the general secretary of the Bonded Labor Liberation Front, an organization dedicated to freeing bonded laborers forced to work to pay off debts, real or imagined. He also founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Children Mission, an organization dedicated to ending bonded labor and saving children from trafficking.
“This is a very happy moment for every Indian,” he said in comments aired on the Indian news channel NDTV on Friday. “If with my humble efforts the voice of tens of millions of children in the world who are living in servitude is being heard, congratulations to all.”
He emphasized that child labor “perpetuates poverty.”
“Poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labor and exploitation of children,” he said. “It’s a triangular relationship between child labor, poverty and illiteracy, and I have been trying to fight all of these things together.”
Mr. Satyarthi also founded the Mukti Ashram, or Liberation Retreat, in the 1980s to teach bonded laborers, overwhelmingly children, new trades so they could participate freely in the Indian economy.
He worked toward their release through Supreme Court orders and saved children forced to embroider textiles in a factory in New Delhi, weave carpets in Uttar Pradesh and toil on rice fields in Madhya Pradesh. His work was at times dangerous, and he was assaulted by circus owners when he freed Nepali children working in the Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh.
He has spoken passionately on the issue of child rights and on the systemic forces, including the caste system, that contribute to bonded labor in India.
“Caste, religion, the political system, the economic system — all are helping the bonded labor owners,” Mr. Satyarthi said in an interview with The New York Times in 1992. “I believe in Gandhi’s philosophy of the last man, that is, the bonded laborer is the last man in Indian society, that we are here to liberate the last man.”
In 1998, he organized the Global March Against Child Labor across 103 countries, which helped to pave the way for an International Labor Organization convention on the worst forms of child labor.
For the previous two years, the prize had been awarded to international bodies: the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2013 and the European Union in 2012.