100-day-challenge

Much of the conversation about gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) encourages people to report. Tell someone. Speak to a teacher. Ask for help. But someone has to know what to do with that information.

A campaign asking people to speak about gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) also has to be ready for what happens when they do. That is one of the interesting developments coming out of the 100-Day Challenge in Greater Tzaneen. The Department of Social Development and Correctional Services, working with Letaba TVET College, has reached more than 3,000 young people at the college and secondary schools across the region.

In August, the Breaking Through Team in Stellenbosch moved its 100-Day Challenge out of meeting rooms and into the streets and homes of two communities. Their goal for these 100 days is a demanding one: to equip at least 100 community members to recognise the signs of abuse, respond safely, and refer survivors to the right support services, so that more incidents are reported and communities become safer places to live.

Majuba TVET College Dundee Technology Centre, in partnership with Higher Health, successfully hosted an engaging Men’s Dialogue aimed at empowering and educating male students on issues that affect their personal, social, and professional development.

What does addressing gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) look like when the workplace is also where people live, raise their children and spend most of their lives?

This is one of the questions informing SANParks’ 100-Day Challenge in Kruger National Park where many staff members live in villages within the park. This makes KNP an important setting for understanding some of the conditions that can contribute to GBVF and what can be done to address them.

At Modimolle, Onicca Maponya’s teams took on three 100-Day Challenges at once, each difficult in its own way, and each tied to a person waiting for the system to work.

A divorce file looks like paperwork until you open it. Inside, there is usually far more, the safety of a woman who wants out, the future of children, and a dispute over the assets that will decide whether she can start again. At Thabazimbi Regional Court, the team set an ambitious goal against exactly this kind of complexity, reducing a backlog of 97 divorce matters by 90% in 100 days.

Sexual offence cases are among the hardest a court will handle. Where DNA evidence is involved, the investigation has to run its full course before a trial can start, and every week of that wait is a week a survivor spends living with an open case. Knowing all of this the team at Lephalale Regional Court still set a goal that many would have called unrealistic, cutting a backlog of 33 sexual offence matters by 90% in 100 days.

Since starting on 25 May they have finalised seven, up from six in late July.

Through its Ending GBVF 100-Day Challenge, the Free State Department of Sport, Arts and Culture is exploring how libraries can become community spaces where people access information about gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF).

On 9 August 1956, 20 000 women climbed the steps of the Union Buildings carrying more than 100 000 signatures. They had travelled from cities, towns, reserves and villages, and they arrived in groups of twos and threes because large gatherings were banned. Seventy years later, the demand they made has changed shape rather than been met.