Women’s rights group writes to President Ramaphosa over continued GBV

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Cape Town - A group of women’s rights activists from Cape Town have written to President Cyril Ramaphosa saying that they are unsatisfied with his promises on violence against women and demanding action. In a petition addressed to the president and members of the Cabinet including Justice and Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola and Police Minister Bheki Cele, SA Women Fight Back said: “Enough is enough. Mr President, what has happened under you and your administration’s watch to Tazne van Wyk, Anene Booysen, Uyinene Mrwetyana, Hannah Cornelius, Jesse Hess, Meghan Cremer, cannot and will not be accepted.” The letter further said: “We are calling on you to provide, publicly, the weekly reports which you have promised your country on November 18, 2019. We have not seen any reports or real progress that prevent these murders. What we see are sex offenders and murderers out, free on bail and parole being released daily, opposed to being given harsher prison sentences. "At the end of the day we continue picking up the brutalised and dead bodies of our women and girls.” The group has planned what it is calling “Project Namuhla, an emergency national mobilisation” set for March 7.

Activist Debbie Engelbrecht said, “The petition will be delivered directly to the office of the Presidency at Tuynhuys at 11.30am on Friday this week. The petition has already reached 530000 signatures, to date. One of the calls is that violent criminals are sentenced to life with no parole.”

Meanwhile, Lamola has today convened an urgent meeting with high-ranking officials from the department of correctional services and chairpersons and secretaries of correctional service parole boards in the Western Cape.

According to a press statement, the meeting at the Goodwood Correctional Facility Hall would be tasked with reviewing parole cases granted in the Western Cape during the last financial year to see whether there had been a failure to comply with the processes and procedures of the Correctional Services Act.

At the same time, the National Council of Provinces would today host a National Gender Machinery Summit at the Old Assembly Chamber, Parliament.

A statement from Parliament said: “The summit will take stock of the achievements of the national gender machinery and conduct an audit of the challenges currently facing the national gender machinery.

“Despite the notable strides made in women’s empowerment and gender equality in the country since the dawn of democracy in 1994, the majority of women still suffer from multi-dimensional poverty, inequality and discrimination based on sex and gender; and multiple social problems such as gender-based violence,” said the statement.

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