By Dorothy Nokuzola Ndhlovu
We, the Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa), have called on authorities and communities to act against rape culture and sexual violence during this year’s 16 Days of Activism of No Violence Against Women and Children, which kicked off this week.
The UN defines rape culture as a social environment that allows sexual harassment and sexual violence against women and girls to be widely seen as normal and permissible without any adverse consequences for perpetrators. It thrives in communities characterised by gender and social inequalities and deeply flawed ideas about masculinity, femininity and sexual orientation.
“Rape culture is embedded in the way we think, speak, and move in the world; while the contexts may differ, rape culture is always rooted in patriarchal beliefs, power, and control,” says the UN in its statement on the International Day of No Violence Against Women and Children.
Video clips of gratuitous sexual harassment at Bree Street Taxi Rank in Johannesburg that have trended recently on social media, and which are a repeat of similar incidents last year, suggest that rape culture is endemic in major metropolitan areas and forms an integral part of women and girls’ lived experience.
We call on communities to use this year’s campaign to question and reject patriarchal behaviour and beliefs that allow rape culture to ruin the lives of the most vulnerable in society.
A particularly physically and psychological injurious form of rape culture is sexual violence or rape. Former South African deputy president and current UN under-secretary-general and executive director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka says it damages the body and the mind and can have life-changing, unchosen results such as pregnancy or sexually-transmitted diseases.
Fedusa notes that 2020 has been a critical year in the lived experience of women and girls, because of the drastic intensification of gender-based violence which has earned itself the terrible title of shadow pandemic.
The federation calls on the government to ratify and implement ILO Convention 190 and Recommendation 206. It has been two years since the International Labour Organisation adopted Convention 190. Its ratification is long overdue.
We call on government, civil society and business to adopt proactive steps to fight GBV. It is equally unacceptable that so-called corrective rape takes place, where LBTQI+ community members are brutally abused. This is a rape culture that needs to be condemned unambiguously by all as it has no place in our society.
Dorothy Nokuzola Ndhlovu is Fedusa’s vice-president: Gender and Social Justice.
The Star