Page 16 - SCAT GBV Report - Addressing Gender-Based Violence - 2021

women. Either way, the strategy of leading with women – their voices and choices – is central. This includes advancing women’s representation in the community and in driving the outreach activities of the LDAs. Also, women’s increased participation in community decision-making is viewed as key to changing their position of diminished power and status, which enables and entrenches discrimination against them.
We started a movement where women are going to drive the programme against GBV and the programme will be informed by that movement ... One of the things is for them to be part of the bigger group, and to acknowledge themselves that they are not an object, they are a subject. Nobuzwe Mofokeng, ILDA.
It’s better if we do it in groups. If you and I on our own tackle violence it will never work. If you stand alone, nothing works. But if you stand up in a group and you look over your shoulder and you see all these women who support you in this work, then we can go out together.
Deseree Brand, WRDC.
We go to those rural areas for women, especially in the traditional councils, to empower them, so that they can fight for themselves. Tembakazi Mthembu, PSJAC.
We are trying to bring women leadership to the forefront, letting women speak up for themselves and empower themselves.
Jonathan van der Westhuizen, SALDA.
For some organisations, feminism is central to their work with and for women:
Feminism is what we do. That’s why our focus is women and the liberation of women, and to better the lives of women, and to make sure there are equal opportunities for ... The women we work with are grassroots women, and we can show them – ‘this that you do is actually feminism’. Wendy Pekeur, Ubuntu.
We need a women’s agenda ... women need to represent themselves on all community issues, and strengthening women leaders – women to come out and lead.
Nobuzwe Mofokeng, ILDA.
Organising women, and doing so in numbers, can shift the balance of forces so that their choices are made increasingly visible and legitimate within a community. Drawing on a human rights framework – which underpins how LDAs approach GBV – women, as rights bearers, are actively make claims on the rights to dignity and equality.
It is important that the woman is enabled, and that she is able to make a choice that works for her. Not a choice for the children – I will stay for the children’s sake – or I will stay because I am financially dependent, and then she ends up that she is no more.
Wendy Pekeur, Ubuntu.
[Our work] is to make sure that women can stand up for themselves and men should adapt so that women can stand without men. Also, so that women can take decisions on their behalf and not dependent on men, and can go to any institution to raise their voices.
Nomboniso, PSJAC.
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“Finish this Elephant”: Rural Community Organisations’ Strategic Approaches to Addressing GBV