Note from the Editor in Chief ello and welcome to all those engaged
around the world! H
GBVF is not a local issue. It is a national economic crisis costing billions of rands each year, and a health and safety crisis costing hundreds of lives and causing irreparable damage to countless victims each year. Certainly, there are deficiencies in the system but we should not wait for a perfect system to emerge before doing the work of addressing GBVF. Instead, we must strive for improved inter-sectoral, multi-stakeholder approaches to this problem. No organisation, corporation, agency, institution, or individual has the luxury of pretending to be in an unimpacted position. GBVF is eroding the best of what our country offers – women do not have true freedom of movement, many are in economic distress akin to slavery and fear will likely drive tourists away. GBVF is a human rights catastrophe, and it will require the contribution of every able person to curtail it before it becomes irrevocable. Collective Action magazine continues to be intent on serving an enabling role in advancing collaboration across sectors and disseminating information relevant to advancing the GBVF response. This edition of the magazine offers coverage of the Summit with 14 interviews with Summit participants. A new feature of this edition is the inclusion of multimedia links where interviews can be watched and listened to. In addition, we have included 2 articles in indigenous languages. These additions and upgrades seek to fulfil our
with and invested in the gender-based violence response in South Africa and
South Africa, consistently and most terrifyingly, ranks in the top 3 nations for rape, femicide and suicide. We are a nation in deep pain, coping with complex trauma and in the words of President Ramaphosa, “seems to be at war with itself”. However, hope still abounds, and despite setbacks, the current presidential administration has demonstrated commitment to ending GBVF within our lifetime. This past month has marked a historic occasion in that the Presidential Summit on GBVF 2 took place on 1 and 2 November 2022. While some have questioned the necessity of a second Summit, I believe that summits of this nature must continue to be a national priority and should perhaps take place more frequently, to better track successes and hold one another accountable. The summit demonstrated that progress in the GBVF response has indeed been made; three new pieces of legislation will testify to that. However, a vast gap still exists between the ambitions of the National Strategic Plan on GBVF (NSP-GBVF) and the implementation thereof. I am of the view that the NSP on GBVF cannot be successfully implemented when the work is taking place in pockets and silos, with division between government agencies and a fractured civil society sector. Nor can it be effectively upscaled without the full-blown participation of corporate South Africa and funders.
We are a nation in deep pain, coping with complex trauma, and in the words of President Ramaphosa,
“seems to be at war with itself"
promise to be ever more inclusive and accessible to those working in the GBVF response sector and the public at large.
With special appreciation to UN Women who have made this special edition possible
Tracey Kotzen - Editor in Chief
Dec 2022 | Collective Action Magazine
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