South Africa has one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world.
Several women, wearing orange vests, walk through a Johannesburg neighborhood known for crime, where they knock on doors and stop everyone who crosses the street, even young people returning from school.
They are the so-called brigades against gender violence and their mission is titanic: tackling the plague of femicides and violence against women and children in South Africa.
The cases are repulsive and the number of recorded incidents is staggering. A law student was murdered, her body cut into pieces and stuffed into a suitcase.
Another university student was raped and beaten to death with an industrial scale inside a post office. An eight-month-pregnant woman was found hanging from a tree.
“We cannot ignore what we (see) until justice takes its course,” says 52-year-old Juliet Ngonyama, the orange vest slung over one shoulder.
The color orange means revolution in certain political jargon, but in your case symbolizes your determination to stop the violence, which has worsened since the pandemic.
When talking to villagers, they discover cases that in other circumstances would have gone unreported. They walk in pairs to talk to everyone who crosses their path, men and women.
“Gender violence hits women, children and men emotionally, physically, financially and psychologically”they say at the beginning of the conversation.
South Africa has one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world.
One hundred rapes a day
More than 100 rapes are reported daily, while a woman is killed on average every three hours., according to official figures.
The latest quarterly statistics show a 7.1% increase in rapes, with 9,556 women raped between July and September.
“These statistics are embarrassing”, lamented in November President Cyril Ramaphosa, who described violence against women as a “second pandemic”, after COVID-19.
There is “a relentless war against the bodies of women and children that, despite our efforts, is not diminishing,” Ramaphosa said. “If the character of a nation is measured by how it treats women and children, we have fallen low”he admitted.
The Gauteng province government launched the brigades in August last year “to ensure that they reach the victims in their homes with a door-to-door campaign,” says the coordinator, Senosha Malesela.
One day in the Rabie Ridge neighborhood, neighbors alerted crews to a 22-year-old woman who had been repeatedly abused by her brother.
I was too terrified to discuss the details because the brother was around. Instead, she gave her their phone numbers so the brigades would call her later.
Women trapped in the same space as their abusers often end up in sheltersBut South Africa has only 100 shelters in the entire country, and not all provinces fund them adequately. One of them is the Nisaa center, which operates in the southern Lenasia neighborhood of Johannesburg.
Its administrator Gladys Mmadintsi cannot recall a single day the center has not received a victim since it opened in April 1994. “Instead of going down … now it’s worse,” laments Mmadintsi, 57.
Cape Town’s St. Anne Home has also seen an increase in abuse since the pandemic.
On a recent visit, AFP journalists observed the arrival of a woman at night and another with a baby at dawn. Pandemic restrictions, which limit movement, are causing more women to seek refuge, says St. Anne’s director Joy Lange.
“Before, victims of abuse could escape when they went to work”He comments after noting that “the intensity of the violence” increased.
Normalized violence
Parliament approved three laws in September to toughen the fight against gender violence, but activists say they don’t attack the causes of the problem.
Many times South African men grow up fatherless, suffered violence in childhood, have false notions of masculinity, and are unemployedsaid Craig Wilkinson, founder of the NGO Father A Nation.
They are “a set of explosive factors,” he commented.
“No law can heal broken and wounded men”, he points out. Legislation is like “putting the lid on a pressure cooker. There will be an explosion, you have to deal with the pressure, “he adds.
Violence against women has become so normal that “it is more difficult for people to go out and seek help and try to help other survivors”, says Sima Diai, in charge of programs at Nisaa.
Nathalie, 40, who has been in Nisaa for two months, took a decade to seek help. She recalls multiple abuses, including a beating with a crowbar that left her three ribs broken.
“That guy hit me so bad that I hated myself for letting it happen,” says Jacqueline, 29, who has been staying at St. Anne for nine months. (I)
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