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11 November 2004

Madame Speaker,
Honourable Members

Every year the 16 Days of Activism Campaign offers South Africans from all walks of life an opportunity to do the one thing we South Africans do very well: working together to find solutions to common problems. During this time NGOs, the private sector, faith-based organisations, government, parastatals and other strategic role-players band together to encourage a greater awareness of and to promote a national resistance to women and child abuse.

It is a time for people to come together and to focus on a common problem, regardless of political persuasion, religious affiliation or cultural background. It is, after all, a problem that transcends politics, religion, culture and all the other “differences” that define our society.

The Department of Correctional Services (DCS), as Government’s lead department, has been tasked by the Presidency, to coordinate the national campaign. This implies the delivery of a campaign with an increasingly broader reach than in all the preceding years.

The success of our previous campaigns has been attributed to the formation of strategic partnerships between government, civil society, business and a variety of other valued sectoral partners – all united by a common cause: to eradicate the abuse of woman and children.

And this year, as more of our friends in other sectors involve themselves in the campaign, so its impact and reach will broaden and expand.

Over the past three months the Office on the Status of Women (OSW), the Office on the Rights of the Child (ORC) and the Office on the Status of Disabled Persons (OSDP) – all units within the Presidency – have been working with the DCS, the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) and other sectoral partners to develop a national calendar of events that we hope will resonate throughout an ever broader South African community, across the urban/rural divide.

Such a wide range of activities has been organised by role-players that one can simply not be excused from finding a way to participate in this process. This year’s Calendar of Events reflects the diversity of the audiences to which we must speak; it ranges from workshops in community centres at assorted venues to an imbizo with traditional leaders hosted by the Limpopo Province.

So too, we have tried to use technology to bridge the digital divide by engaging urban and rural women across the SADC region in our Cyber Dialogues project.

Gender Links supported by the Government Information and Communication Services (GCIS), the DCS and other strategic partners in the private sector will run daily chat-room sessions with communication nodes across the SADC region.

It is an ambitious project and already facilitators have been trained to engage their respective communities and to formulate the inputs that will be made to a panel of experts on a daily basis for the duration of the 16 Days. Here, the Johannesburg Metro, under the stewardship of Executive Mayor, Amos Masondo, has provided enthusiastic support for this project. In addition to other regional facilitators, Gender Links has also trained councillors as for this purpose. These councillors will engage and bring into the Cyber Dialogues their ward-based inputs – each one of them contributing to the richness and depth of the discussion.

The question is often asked “What can I do to support the programme?” It is for this reason that we always try to provide an interactive element in our Campaign in which government’s programme is used to raise funds for NGOs working with victims and survivors of violence. Our Postcard Pledge Campaign provides an opportunity for the general public to make a difference, just by signing the “no violence” pledge. The South African Postal Service (SAPO) has produced and will make 800 000 pledge postcards available in 500 post offices around the country from 17 November 2004. Members of the public can sign the pledges and place the postcards in the specially designated boxes provided for this purpose at the participating post offices. To sweeten the deal, Transnet has sponsored R1 per signature for the first 250 000 signatures collected. This money will be distributed via the Foundation for Human Rights to NGOs working with victims and survivors.

SAPO will transport the signed pledge cards from around the country to the Johannesburg City Metro where they will be pasted onto a huge Wall of Solidarity at the Cyber Dialogue venue located within the Johannesburg Civic Centre. The daily “growth” of this wall will be monitored by the press as the anticipated commitment to the pledge develops and participation by the public swells.

As Members of Parliament, you can arrange pledge ceremonies with your local post office in your community, when you return home for your constituency work.

By encouraging your local community to support this process, you will be supporting the many NGOs and CBOs that provide invaluable caring and support to the many victims and survivors of domestic violence and abuse that turn to our courts and to our police officers for remedy.

To mark the advent of the Campaign, you have heard that President Mbeki has agreed to deliver the keynote address at our Launch Ceremony in Missionvale near Port Elizabeth on 25 November. Here I must thank the Premier of the Eastern Cape, who has put the considerable capacity of her office at the disposal of the operational committee that is organising the event.

Both this event and the Closing Ceremony planned for Mitchell’s Plain on 10 December in Cape Town have been characterised by close cooperation and interaction between the three spheres of government. I would like to thank particularly the executive Mayors in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth for their unreserved cooperation and support.

In our effort to popularise the message of no violence we have identified men and boys as singularly important partners in this Campaign. It is both unhelpful and – I might add – inaccurate to cast men as the constant perpetrators and perpetual enemies of women and children; it also alienates those many good men who are committed to peace and non-violence.

This Campaign will make every effort to convince men and boys of the essential, positive role that they have to play in putting an end to this scourge. The formation of NGOs and professional organisations dedicated to ensuring that men and boys become proactive partners in the elimination of gender-based violence is a welcome and growing trend.

The challenge for us as South Africans is to take this Campaign beyond its 16 days and to make ours a national effort to combat violence for 365 days of each year.

And a good place to do this is in the home. In this – the International Year of the Family – we should all convey the message, through our own behaviour that peace begins in the home. During this coming 16 Days of Activism we should take stock of our individual commitments to ending domestic violence in terms of the way that we raise our sons and daughters and the way in which we relate to one another in our homes. It is at home that children learn the values of respect and dignity. And surely our children learn and develop ideas from observing us, their parents, about the way in which our society views and treats its women and children. We must, as parents and grandparents engage our children in discussions about relationships and sensitise them to the learned behaviours that they must jettison if they are to be truly free.

To commemorate the Year of the Family, the Department of Housing will be building 16 Houses for 16 Women in 16 Days using the sweat equity of prison inmates who have committed to “giving back” to the community. Each province will receive two houses each with the exceptions of the Western Cape and Gauteng that will each receive one. Single women heading households will be identified as beneficiaries for these houses by the Department of Housing. This unique partnership has received the full endorsement of a banking concern that wishes to sponsor this programme on an ongoing basis next year.

Another constituency that has been drawn into the Campaign is our mine workers. In a unique partnership between the Department of Minerals and Energy, the National Union of Mineworkers and the Chamber of Mines, an event is being arranged in Rustenburg to draw that constituency into engaging with the issues of domestic and sexual violence.

It is important that this campaign is driven on the basis of partnership and collaboration. Together, we must expose more people to the vicious and debilitating nature of violence, not only on women and children, but on whole societies. Our efforts each year must convince more people to take a stand and to become proactive agents of change – partners in the elimination of all forms of gender-based and child-directed violence.

Apart from the obvious moral imperatives for supporting this campaign, we must understand that this is a development issue. The existence – or even the threat – of high levels of violence in any society has a direct and negative impact on that society’s ability to develop and grow. The prevalence of gender-based and child-directed violence is one of the most pernicious forms of discrimination because it impacts directly and negatively on the ability of women and children to realise the universal human right to development.

To acknowledge the intersection between the vulnerability to violence and disability, the Department of Sport and Recreation, the Durban City Metro and the KZN Province have collaborated to produce a series of events that will demonstrate the achievements of disabled sportswomen and men in the fields of physical endeavour. Following as it will on the Presidency’s National Event in Limpopo on the International Day for People Living with Disability (December 3rd and at which the President will be present), these events clearly demonstrate our government’s commitment to mainstreaming the rights of the disabled into the national agenda.

So too, the Department of Health’s national event in Cape Town on December the 1st will focus on the heightened risk of people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS to violence and discrimination.

Our Closing Ceremony will take place in Mitchell’s Plain on 10 December. The Deputy President, along with Premier Rasool and several members of Cabinet will bring this year’s campaign to a close. The MEC of Safety and Liaison in the Western Cape, Mr Leonard Ramatlakane, has rallied the provincial role-players in a concerted effort to ensure the delivery of an event that embraces the whole community.

The event will remind us that women’s rights are human rights and that our society will never truly be free until we have achieved the full emancipation of women and institutionalised their equal participation in all aspects of life in the home, in the community and in the workplace.

In the packages that you have received today you will find a pledge postcard and a white ribbon – the international symbol of solidarity for no violence against women. Please wear your ribbons for the full duration of the Campaign. By wearing it you will be saying “I care”; you will be saying “I am a nation builder, a peace-maker and a proud South African”.

I thank you.

Issued by: Ministry of Correctional Services
11 October 2004