SPEECH BY PREMIER
Programme Director
Members of the Provincial Executive Council
Honourable members of the Provincial Legislature
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen.
We are gathered here today to make sense of something that makes absolutely no sense. How can the brutal sexual attack by six grown men on a nine-month-old baby make sense?
Indeed, how can we make sense of the actions of a grown woman who offers shelter to a street kid, take the child to initiation school, and on the return of the child prostitute the child's body to grown men for a fee?
What prompts a teenager to force himself on his grandmother?
What goes on in the mind of a teacher when he forces himself on a pupil young enough to be his daughter?
Indeed what is wrong with that middle-aged women who invites a 13-year-old boy into her house and teaches him how to have make love to her?
Are we really a society that has sunk below the level of animals. Animals don't rape. They don't sleep with their young. What have we done. Senzeni na?
All around us we witness violence in interpersonal relations and families. Violence against women and children. I know that your invitation to me was to speak on gender violence. But then the issue of physical assault, rape and HIV/AIDS are interrelated. So I will touch on all three.
Recent studies indicate that six years after the Beijing World Conference on Women called for global action to end violence against women, not enough progress has been made in addressing the most common form of such violence, domestic violence.
Domestic violence continues to negate the rights of women and girls in all countries and it undermines the lives of one out of every two women in some nations.
Reports indicate that such violence continues to cut across cultures, class, education, incomes, ethnicity and age in every country.
An estimated 60 million women are missing from population
statistics globally; they are victims of their own families, killed deliberately
or through neglect, simply because they are female. And as UNAIDS Executive
Director, Peter Piot, states, up to now we have failed to deal with this issue.
Gender violence is still a taboo subject. In many places it is considered a
private matter, not to be discussed publicly. This is an unacceptable situation.
Gender violence, rape and other forms of sexual abuse are gross violations of
human rights. For too many South African families, gender violence rips apart
the fabric of their lives. It is a tragedy they must confront every day. For too
long, women who have been victimised fought a lonely battle. For too long,
gender violence was an issue kept behind closed doors, treated as a purely
private family matter.
Despite the fact that it usually does occur at home, despite the fact that victims are almost always women and children, gender violence is not just a family problem that neighbours can ignore, not just a woman's problem men can turn away from, it is our problem.
Gender violence is a crime that affects us all. It increases health costs, keeps people from showing up to work, prevents them from performing at their best, keeps children out of school, often prevents them from learning.
It destroys families, relationships and lives, and often prevents children from growing up to establish successful families of their own. It tears at the fabric of who we are as a people and what we want for our children's tomorrows. Although gender violence directly or indirectly brings millions of women to the health care system every year, health care providers too often treat its victims without inquiring about the abuse.
The consequences of this inaction can be devastating for the women living with this violence, for their children, and for their families. Routine screening, with its focus on early identification and its capacity to reach patients, whether or not symptoms are immediately apparent, is a primary starting point to improve efforts to identify domestic violence and take steps to stop it.
For all the women and children who are the victims of gender violence, for all the families destroyed by its terrible reality, I want to encourage health associations, health care providers, and public leaders across our nation to do more.
We must build a more comprehensive response to gender violence throughout our health care system by supporting and encouraging routine screening of domestic violence.
Programme Director, one report states that in some poor communities school girls often resort to sex with older "sugar daddies" to help pay education fees. The fact that many of these men may have multiple partners or practise unsafe sex does not seem to prove a deterrent.
Our traditional roles in society also have a bearing. For millions of women and girls, their subordinate position in numerous societies can make it difficult if not impossible for them to protect themselves from HIV.
They often cannot demand condom use, or refuse sex to their partner, even when they suspect or know he is already infected himself. And they often lack the economic power to remove themselves from relationships that carry major risks of HIV infection.
Violence is part and parcel of these dilemmas. Women, fearful of getting beaten or thrown out, are unlikely to ask their boyfriends to wear a condom, or question them about being faithful. Their fears are justified.
We are told that today over half of all new HIV infections worldwide occur in those under 25 years old. Many of these infections result from violence. Even young children may contract HIV from forced sex, often with close acquaintances, such as family members or 'trusted' friends.
Mothers often know that their children are being abused, yet are afraid to speak out. But I want to stress that the health consequences of abuse are not limited to the obvious risk - getting infected with HIV by the abuser.
Children who are abused are wounded in their self-esteem; they feel dirty, ashamed, they lose faith in others. Later in life this may lead to many kinds of AIDS risk behaviour such as drug use, prostitution and unprotected sex. For boys too, physical abuse as a social norm is carried over from generation to generation.
Boys who watch their fathers abuse their mothers are more likely to become abusers themselves, thus perpetuating the cycle. Some people may look on male violence against women as legally intolerable, but it is still considered an acceptable part of life in many societies, including by its victims.
Gender violence clearly remains a subject of passionate debate in many parts of the world. What can we as government do?
Strengthening the legal framework, both at the international and national level, is obviously crucial.
Yet the best of laws will have little effect if there is not the will to enforce them. Nor will they have any impact if we do not seek to change attitudes, particularly among men and in local communities. This is where the real change will come from.
As government we firmly believe that respect and concern for human rights, including the rights of the child as well as equality between men and women, must be at the core of a collective response to this disease.
The Domestic Violence Act contains a particularly innovative feature -- granting of a temporary Protection Order in cases where the court is satisfied that the actions of the aggressor pose "imminent harm" to the complainant.
This ruling allows protection of the health, safety, and well being of the applicant and includes provision for the aggressor to be evicted from the matrimonial home while continuing to provide monetary relief to the applicant.
What can all of us do, you may ask?
And I call upon all of us to act together to end the domestic violence that threatens too many of our families. All of us, leaders, the media, communities, must speak out and tackle the issue more aggressively.
Only a dedicated, more inclusive approach involving broad partnerships with governments, local communities, and the media can help bring about such changes. We need to break the silence. And we must use our resources for approaches and interventions that work.
Concerning violence toward women, for example, we need to encourage more effective, and imaginative approaches, for their protection, and above all develop policies and programmes that will make a difference.
And we, men, must shoulder our own responsibility. Allow me to speak personally as a male. We men need to explore more honestly what our responsibilities should be with regard to curbing male violence toward women. And we need to act on them.
Studies show that at least one in five men from all layers of society perpetrate some form of physical violence or sexual abuse against a partner during his lifetime. These acts are unacceptable. And it is up to all of us to say so.
We must to build a sense of civic morality in our communities. We MUST begin with the RDP of the soul. As a people we must create a climate in our province and our country hostile to crime, including crimes of corrupt practice within both the public and private sectors.
We surely must do whatever is necessary to effect that RDP of the soul.Real men don't rape. Real men don't abuse women.
I thank you.