Womn of Bathurst, Kariega and Makhanda, through a march and photo exhibition, protested gender-based violence (GBV) experiences and a lack of protection from the police and society.
The struggle against GBV in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa, has always been met with a continued attack on womns’ bodies. According to a community member of Ward Five in Bathurst, “GBV has become a scourge in the Eastern Cape. Every weekend, a woman is raped or murdered”.
To culminate the campaign, Isikhalo released a press statement on 7 December 2022, calling on stakeholders to act with urgency against the slaughter of womn and vulnerable genders (LGBTQI+) by abusive men in the Eastern Cape province.
Habitually, the media features only the most heinous femicides, normalising daily abuse situations. To effectively curb gender-based violence and femicide (GBV/F) in the Eastern Cape, with support from UAF-Africa, the Eastern Cape-based Isikhalo Womn’s Movement conducted a vigorous campaign and a co-creative media training with 60 womn.
The womn were equipped with a deeper understanding of Feminism(s) and movement-building tools such as conflict resolution strategies and community leadership roles and how to report on womn and GBV issues creatively. They created and exhibited striking photos demonstrating their lived experiences, such as the ‘ukuthwala’ – a marriage abduction tradition in rural Eastern Cape that forces young girls into marriage, depriving them of education.
Additionally, the organisation produced and launched a short film highlighting the different instances of violence that their workshop participants faced and the protests they organised for the 16 Days of Activism period. In this video, participants shared the impact of harmful cultural norms and practices and how they played out, the roles of families in normalising violence against womn, the lack of access to counselling (even at a peer-to-peer level), how being neglected by the media has only acted to invisibilise them, as well as the systemic issues – under resourced police stations and clinics.
Fraternal organisations Kariega, Makhanda, and Ndlambe joined the Isikhalo campaign, culminating in a protest march to the photo exhibition hall, where the participants held the photo exhibits aloft and called for change.
Stepping forward to 2023, the movement plans to embark on a digital and action-based campaign called #Beyond16days. The campaign will include a podcast to discuss GBV/F issues, a digital knock-and-drop paper, a Gender Based Violence app for emergency services and the establishment of media clubs in three high schools across the three localities.
It is worth noting that the organisation gained massive newspaper and television coverage for their great initiative. Womn in the rural Eastern Cape are often forgotten when issues of GBV are discussed nationally – this results in a lack of provision of resources and attention to the development of their plight. The further murder of a womn in Kariega led members to partake in a memorial service. On January 26, 2023, the womn of Bathurst again used the mobile photo exhibit to protest a rape case.
