The chair which is said to be the first of it’s kind on the Africans Continent, is aimed at enhancing research and innovation capacity in areas of safety and security. And to shape public policy to sustainable solutions to crime in the teaching and learning space.
TUT Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research, Innovation and Engagement, Vathiswa Papu-Zamxaka, says it’s important for them to establish the chair because South Africa is rayes among the most violent countries in the world.
“The establishment of this research chair could not have been more and appropriate as the scourge of gender based violence has reached an alarming proportion and its worrying. A question may be asked why would a university drive the establishment of such a chair. It’s because GBV is terrible. And the fact that it has been taking time in our learning spaces is particularly disheartening,” Papu-Zamxaka.
Meanwhile, executive Director at Masimanyane Women’s Support Centre, Lesley Ann Foster says the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown caused a spike in Gender-Based Violence (GBV).
Foster says a lot women were in isolation with partners that were abusive during lockdown and that caused tremendous problems for women.
She says, “We saw a spike in gender-based violence, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, we saw a spike in incest, so that was the rape of family members and in particularly in children over that period of time and girl children were the most vulnerable. So we saw different ways in which women suffered as a result of COVID.”
Foster says post COVID-19 they saw an increase in a number of women seeking divorces, which she describes as unusual.
She says, “The numbers were higher and then with the domestic violence, some of the problems we saw were really horrendous, for instance women were forced to sign over property by an abusive partner at that time, this is something one wouldn’t have expected to happen, they were forced to sign loan agreements, their security at home was compromised because they lost property at home.”
AUDIO: Foster speaks about government’s response to gender-based violence during lockdown:
