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Prioritise active participation to win war against abuse: Dlamini

Bathabile Dlamini
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Active participation and education on how to deal with violence against women should be prioritised in order to win the war against abuse.

This is according to the Minister for Women in the Presidency, Bathabile Dlamini. She was speaking in Pretoria on the progress made to fight violence against women and children.

Monday is the last day of the 16 days of Activism campaign.

Dlamini says many methods of participation were identified during the 2018 campaign, including a campaign similar to that of Arrive Alive.

She says this will encourage discussions about gender-based violence.

“So what we did during the 16 days we started distributing pamphlets at the robots and talked to people about violence. Secondly, I was very happy that towards the end of the campaign the acting DG said, but minister why don’t we have a robot that talks to men because men are perpetrators.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance Women’s Network (DAWN) national leader, Nomafrench Mbombo, led a handful of women to hand over a memorandum of grievances at the SAPS head office in Pretoria. Mbombo says they are calling for greater effort from the police when dealing with Gender-Based Violence.

“We are appealing for police to be professional and also for the honest police. Part of the memorandum includes where we want specialised units because in most instances you find that women become secondary victims, yet they have already been victimised, where you will find that in some instances you don’t have rape kits and in some instances you will find that the questions that are being asked by the police, we are also asking for also -professionalisation of the police, in regard with how they handle sex workers because some of them, it’s their job. It’s part of their profession.”

Dlamini urges every South African to come up with creative ideas on how to deal with violence against women.

“Let’s try and ensure that like Arrive Alive, like HIV/AIDS, families discuss gender-based violence. That is how we are going to win the war and also you can see that even in terms of policy, the way people think, there is an understanding of how we should put the theoretical framework, how does it work for women. And how do we ensure that where there are women’s issues they are seen as women’s issues and they are seen through that eye. Not through the eye of a society.”

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