Page 35 - SCAT GBV Report - Addressing Gender-Based Violence - 2021

The resourcing challenges facing CAOs include a lack of human capacity due to a shortage of funding (HRSC, 2014). This limits the recruitment and retention of personnel, such that community volunteers do much of the gender outreach work. Exacerbated by general material deprivation in the areas where LDAs are located, organisational capacities to expand the range, reach and impact of interventions is constrained.
The challenge with the NGOs I work with are resources. You will find out they don’t have a proper office space to assist the community. Sometimes the phones are not working because of finance problems. So, it’s more about resourcing the NGOs, because the information is there, the encouragement and dedication is there, but it is the resources they don’t have.
Nontuthuzelo Sibaca, SAPS stakeholder.
Insecure and inadequate funding is a significant limitation for LDAs. The needs of vulnerable communities are multiple, and so the demands on organisations are great. Individuals who do the work are mostly unsalaried and have to rely on modest and inconsistent stipends. This makes the requirement for coordinated, consistent and sustainable funding to the sector as a whole an urgent one. CAOSA plays a leading role in advocating for longer-term funding – including from the state – to support crucial community-based structures, services and projects in the CAO sector. It is worth reiterating that resource deprivation also increases vulnerability to GBV, which further compounds its impacts in rural communities.
3.5
Poverty is playing a huge role here. If I am being abused, I wouldn’t dare just walk out of my marriage or the relationship, because who’s going to care for me? Those cases we get a lot.
Wasiela Meniers, SALDA.
You want to make a change, but you don’t have the resources, firstly. And you must almost play God, say for instance with the food you are making and handing out, because there is no way you can feed everybody. Wasiela Meniers SALDA.
Lack of recognition and regulation: “Accountability to those that you serve”
The human rights and social justice sector in South Africa are heavily dependent on the work of CAOs and the support of community-based paralegals. However, their role remains largely unrecognised and unregulated (DOJ, 2020:3). Consequently, the formal recognition and regulation of CAOs is a point of ongoing discussion and debate.
There hasn’t really been proper policy consideration around how a woman needs to access services within her community ... That should be fundamental to policy, that you need to have a localised approach to GBV, linking all these service providers to a local structure that is going to be looping in the information and monitoring.
Tshenolo Tshoaedi, key informant.
“Finish this Elephant”: Rural Community Organisations’ Strategic Approaches to Addressing GBV 35