South-Africans have taken to the streets in their thousands to protest the growing gender-based violence against women in the country. The Protests took place in all major cities, including Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban.
The protest in Cape Town saw hundreds of protesters gather outside Parliament to hand over a memorandum after which a moment of silence was observed in honor of children and women killed so far in gender-based violence across the country; a memorandum of demands was read out after.
Read: President Mnangagwa Calls for Calm amid Zimbabwe Post-Election Violence
The South African government has declared August as Women’s Month and Aug. 1 as the day of mourning for victims of gender-based violence. The Women’s Month is celebrated under the theme: “100 Years of Women’s Struggles: Together Fighting Gender-Based Violence.”
The campaign yearns to acknowledge and expose violent masculinity, harmful traditions as well as practices that help to normalize gender-based violence and impunity of perpetrators.
Protesters were urged to wear black clothes and form a human chain on the streets in front of offices, homes and social places by Minister of Women in the Presidency, Bathabile Dlamini.
She said it was a significant way to remember women and children who are victims of gender-based violence.
“Gender-based violence affects us all and it continues to be the responsibility of all people to bring an end to this gross human rights violation,” the Minister of Women said.
The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) has pledged its unwavering support and solidarity with the campaign, organized by various organizations of civil society and progressive women’s formations.
According to the ANC’s Youth League national spokesperson, Mlondi Mkhize, “We live in a country that is ravaged by atrocious violence against women and children, especially targeted against female black African working-class women and children, most often by people living within our apartheid-created townships or squalid squatter camps.”
The ANC’s Youth League spokesperson further reiterated that the organisation was emboldened by unity of purpose demonstrated by all social forces in the nationwide protests to rid the country of being a haven of gender-based violence.
South Africa is notorious for Gender-based violence where sexual offences against women increased from 31,665 in 2015 to 70,813 in 2016 and 2017, an increase of 53 per cent.
Women are most often targeted in gender-based violence and at least three women die every day at the hands of their intimate partners with an average of 109.1 rapes recorded each day between 2016 and 2017.