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Programme Director
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

This year we again gather in these hallow portals to once again highlight our total commitment to the campaign against violence against women. The 16 Days of Activism campaign against gender violence creates a platform for all of us who are concerned about domestic violence to create awareness around this evil.

We gather in this fashion to raise awareness around gender-based violence as a human rights abuse. Also to ensure that survivors of violence are offered protection from those who cannot keep their hands to themselves. But more importantly to work towards the total eradication of those who believe that the only way they can proof their manhood is by assaulting defenceless women and children.

Let me ask you therefore to pause for a moment and think about all those women, girl children and other victims who died from being assaulted and sexually abused in homes or on the streets, and those who are victims of exploitation, hunger and disease.

All around us we witness violence in interpersonal relations and families - violence against women and children.

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, 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 enquiring 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.

The scars of domestic violence and sexual abuse are too deep. 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.

Programme Director, allow me to talk briefly about the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In most cases domestic violence results in or is a cause of sexual abuse of a parent or a child. Let us remember that HIV/AIDS kills those on whom our society relies to provide income through agriculture, through mining, in the factories, those who run our schools and our hospitals, and those who govern our towns and provinces.

It worsens the poverty pervasive in our society when parents who are breadwinners die. By allowing it to spread, we face the danger that half of our youth will not reach adulthood. Their education will be wasted. The economy will shrink. There will be a large number of sick people whom the healthy will not be able to maintain. Our dreams as a people will be shattered.

For too long we have closed our eyes as a nation, hoping the truth was not so real. Many of us have grieved for orphans left with no one to fend for them. We have experienced AIDS in the groans of wasting lives. We have carried it in small and big coffins to many graveyards. At times we did not know that we were burying AIDS victims. At other time we knew, but chose to remain silent.

Believe me when I say that one of our greatest challenges is how we deal with the HIV/AIDS scourge. In partnership with all sectors of society, we must continue to give absolute priority to HIV/AIDS and violence against women and children.

The power to defeat the spread of this evil lies in our joining hands as youth, as women and men, as business people, as workers, as religious people, as parents and teachers, as farmers and farm workers, as the unemployed and the professionals, as the rich and the poor - in fact, all of us.

But we can and MUST do something about it. In fact we have started to and continue to do something about it. This gathering here today is proof that we are doing something about it. The fact that we would be meeting in similar fashion on Friday at Marapyane Stadium, and on Sunday at Matibidi Community grounds, demonstrates our pledge to blow the whistle and break the silence.

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 programs 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.

We need to work towards the moral regeneration of our society. Let us take the message to the street. The millions of people in employment are a captive audience for campaigns against the abuse of women and children.

Given the fact that these employees are family members, parents and community leaders, collectively the business sector has access to the majority of the South African population. And as government we employ close to a million people and will thus be affected by domestic violence like any other large employer. Each government department must therefore develop a better understanding on how exactly domestic violence is impacting on its line function.

Communities have tremendous powers, resources, and ability to find appropriate solutions to their problems. Community-based organisations therefore enjoy a high degree of credibility and can mobilise large numbers of people. Non-governmental organisations are usually formed to address a particular problem. Their operational principles are flexible and usually appropriate to the task at hand.

Campaigns against women and child abuse are likely to succeed if they enjoy a high degree of community involvement and support. Community-based and non-governmental organisations are key partners of government in the fight against violence against women and children and in the fight against HIV/AIDS. These types of organisations are well placed to raise the awareness of gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS in communities before the harsh realities of the epidemic become more evident.

Similarly the entertainment industry, arts, culture and sports target mainly the young section of society. Sporting personalities are powerful role models with the ability to influence attitudes of societies. The arts and entertainment sector are in an ideal position to spread our anti-women abuse messages.

I believe, therefore, that it is important for all of us to educate each other about the evils of women and child abuse. Everyday every night - wherever we are - we shall let our families, friends and peers know that they can save themselves and save the nation, by changing the way we live and how we love.

We shall use every opportunity openly to discuss the issue of violence against women and children and the danger AIDS poses. As partners against women and children abuse, as ambassadors of the AIDS campaign, we must together pledge to care. And so today we join hands in the partnership, fully aware that our unity is our strength.

The simple but practical action that we take today is tomorrow's insurance for our nation. There is no other moment but the present, to take action - and to take it now.

I thank you.

Issued by: Office of the Premier, Mpumalanga Provincial Government

25 November 2003