Cape Town - “Take back the night and reclaim your streets.”
This was a message shared by NGO Ilitha Labantu, the police and the CPF as they navigated through the streets of Khayelitsha in a bid to raise awareness about the scourge of gender-based violence on Thursday.
The motorcade is a multi-stakeholder response to combat the scourge of violence against women and children, and it visited Lingelethu West and Harare.
In the recently released second-quarter crime statistics, the Harare police station took the second spot nationally on the top 30 stations for rape stats, while Lingelethu West was on the 20th spot provincially.
In July and August, the Harare police station recorded 59 rape incidents, an increase of 37.2% or a count difference of 16 cases. Lingelethu West on the other hand saw a 6.3% increase in the same period.
One of the gruesome incidents reported during this period was the rape of a 19 year old from Makhaza who was gang-raped and assaulted, allegedly by an ex-lover and his friends, while she was walking home from a friend’s house in the early hours of the morning in September.
Two men aged 23 and 25 were arrested as a result. Ilitha Labantu spokesperson Siyabulela Monakali said Khayelitsha had been featured largely over the decade in the top 30 GBV hot spot list and these awareness campaigns were conducted to help foster meaningful change in the fight against the GBV scourge.
“South Africa’s biggest Achilles heel in its efforts towards addressing the scourge, is its reactionary approach.
“We call for more proactive approaches which will include 365 days of the year approaches towards addressing the scourge, because far too often the focus on GBV is only during Women’s Month or the 16 Days of Activism Campaign.
“This has been counter-intuitive as we need more stringent measures to be implemented which will see to the needs of victims and survivors of violence and abuse,” he said.
CPF chairperson Funeka Soldaat, who expressed shock at the increase in rape cases in Harare, attributed it to alcohol abuse. Soldaat said they were most worried about the upcoming holiday season, which, she said would lead to more rape cases, especially on weekends.
“These kinds of programmes are important in our area, especially in collaboration with other organisations to drive the message of rape prevention.
“We see more cases coming from the newly established informal settlements that had no basic services.
“It’s only appropriate that we reach out to communities as the stats revealed that these cases mostly occur in the home of the perpetrator or victim where family, friends or neighbours are likely to have heard or seen something,” she said.
Soldaat called on residents to mobilise and take active steps to foster safety in their communities.
