Friday, 09 May 2025
Input by Ms LL Van Der Merwe, MP
Chairperson: PC on Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities
Hon House Chairperson –
Each year, during the 16 days of Activism Campaign for No Violence Against Women and Children, this Parliament, for a brief moment stops to consider the national crisis that is gender-based violence.
For a brief moment, we recognise that our women and children are under siege. For a brief moment, we declare our renewed commitment to fight this brutal war.
For 16 days, we cry with the parents who have lost their daughters, we cry with the children who have lost their mothers, and we cry with the friends who have lost their classmates.
For a fleeting moment, we remember Anene Booysen, Joshlin Smit and Uyinene. For that brief moment, we share the pain of their fathers, their mothers and their grandparents.
Then, as 16 Days of Activism campaign draws to a close, we continue with business as usual. Only to return to the next 16 Days of Activism campaign, to say exactly the same things, to lament exactly the same failures, and to quote exactly the same statics.
And the statistics speak for themselves.
South Africa is one of the most unsafe places, in the world, to be a woman. With levels of violence comparable to countries at war. In just nine months, last year, SAPS recorded more than 31 000 rape cases.
That’s 113 cases every, single day. Almost 5, every hour.
And remember, these are just the REPORTED cases. How many more go unaccounted for, or just lost in a broken system?
Then, in the first nine months of 2024/25, 2,884 women and 902 children were murdered.
These are not just statistics.
These are lives. And loved ones.
Futures and potential, extinguished by brutality.
A recent newspaper headline put our grim reality into perspective when they asked the question, ‘Where have your children gone, South Africa?’
According to SAPS, on average, one child is reported missing every five hours. Over 16,000 children went missing over the past 18 years, with approximately 4,000 children, 4000 children never found.
What does it say Hon Members about, us and our society when our children can simply vanish?”
The IFP, has a clear vision for how we can turn the tide. The IFP believes that we need to address the gaps where that exist, and we need concrete action tied with political will to beat this national crisis.
- We need to invest in our police force: we need to provide them with better training, more resources, and the capacity to truly protect our communities.
- The IFP believes that we need to fund and support NGOs and NPOs. Not defund them: they are on the front lines, providing vital services on behalf of the State, to the most vulnerable.
- We need to strengthen the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities: we need to give them real resources in order to drive real change.
- We need to strengthen the Commission of Gender Equality: they have an important role to play. Yet they remain largely invisible and largely ineffective.
- We need to hold accountable Departments that fail our women and children: starting with the Department Justice and Education.
Our justice system Hon Members, is faltering – from our police stations to our courts.
We saw this in the Omotoso verdict. We see it in the delays in DNA testing and the lack of rape kits as some police stations.
We see this at the Department of Education that missed its own December 2023 deadline, to vet all teachers employed by the State. Currently only 19% of teachers employed by the State are vetted against the sexual offences register.
As a result, our children are at risk.
We these failures in the faces of the trained social workers who are sitting at home. A 2018 Cabinet resolution to absorb all social workers trained by the State, by key departments such as Health, Police and Education, this simply been ignored.
We see these failures in the pervasive lawlessness, that is corroding the very fabric of our society. We see these failures in the unchecked levels of illegal migration that poses a safety and security threat to our nation, and communities at large.
We must ensure that rapists, and murderers face the full consequences of their actions and the full might of the law. Criminals should not be emboldened by impunity.
Hon Members, we must today confront a difficult and hard truth: the systems meant to protect our women, our children, and persons with disabilities are failing them.
We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye.
We can no longer confine our activism to fleeting moments of national outrage.
We can no longer accept these failures.
We must demand accountability and change.
A failure to do so will be failure to our constitutional responsibility as elected leaders.
As leaders, we need to lead a campaign of moral revival, one that restores family values and ubuntu.
The IFP believes that regardless of our political affiliations, we must stand united and put women and children at the very centre of our focus.
For A violent war wages in every street, every community and throughout the length and breadth of our beloved country. Our people need their elected leaders to step onto the fight by playing our part
Together, we can win this war.
I thank you.
