We understand the difference. In the similarities of cultures across the world so no matter how you take it aljazeera will bring you the news and current of the matter to. 0. As my next that is a chilling question thousands of women and girls in south africa are asking as a relentless series of killings continue to shock the country im femi oke. In the 1st of 2 special shows on south africa we ask how can gender based violence be eradicated join todays conversation through twitter and our youtube live chat. South africas president says that violence against women and girls is a crime against common humanity made a wave of killings that has provoked revulsion and Anger University student natasha khan a beer died earlier today a day off to she was dropped off at a home in an unconscious she had been missing for 3 weeks in another recent case student oh yeah ne ne. Was found dead inside a post office in cape town and the rape king a 14 year old johnny come malo in cape town has also horrified the nation because more and more people are sharing online. Blame no more without us share our burden just some of the house sides weve been keeping an eye on over the past week but much of what weve seen has centered on women asking am i that x. And we asked former stream guest and artist i mean are conrad whos been tweeting from cape town to explain take a look. In the wake of all of the atrocious rapes and murders swallowing womens month and during womens month we dont know if we are going to be next we dont know if were going to be the next headline for the newspapers we dont know if were going to be some random mans next victim or even the victim of someone that we know personally we dont know if were going to be found in a ditch somewhere or if were going to die as collateral to my says that our hands up and our legs open and we dont want to be we all want to live our lives freely and with without fear but we are afraid we dont want to be afraid anymore and we shouldnt be chilling words what in this photo meant these tellings heris asserts i am not next she tells us that women in south africa are either victims or they know someone who is and that these hashtags are a cry for help and a call for the government to do something because for change is something were also seeing on the streets just in comber took these photos at an anti by the nz protest outside parliament in cape town late last week and more protests are coming this week with activists saying silence is no longer an option in the fight against gender based violence i mean. So were joined now from johannesburg via lander t. N. T. She is Co Executive Director at the archives. Through the organization ngs to tackle gender based violence 22nd he lay is director at rise up against gender based violence she is also in johannesburg and completing our line up from johannesburg electo ho no no. He is a social justice and then to add to his hello everybody i wish this was under better circumstances that we got so many amazing young South Africans here to talk about a huge issue in south Africa Yolanda and this is for all of your landing you can start here what is it about south africa that makes it so dangerous for women whats going on hi thank you for having me on the show and like to greet everyone thats watching and chiming in i think what is it that makes africa so violent or rather why is gender based violence the sixtys so rife. I think it would be doing an injustice true kind of not look at all the other Socio Economic and political factors and and appear in i guess the legacy of we are as we come from the movie i as a country and this is walking about looking at 8 looking at the suppose of democracy that we live in looking at i was state governments and this and the political structures and if they are if they have enough or not and have been held accountable if you look at the trauma that we as the people. Who are the majority living in this country we are we with that in terms of dealing with the trauma that we had to carry since there from colonize asia and you know to we are right now in 2019 how we received adequate resources and exit. True to every news of healing and recovery and just getting justice i do not think so so gender based violence is just one of those symptoms. But i think you know theres a bigger issue apart from which is we are a broken society we are a society of poverty instead of as. I guess our economy growing and all of those other factors weve seen a decline in that and weve seen a rise in public to see the rise in more broken homes in angry people People Living on empty stomachs weve seen angry men not getting help and the intake taking that i land im hearing on ice and it is complex and detailed and you could continue for another 30 minutes and still not be finished does that make young rape. Yes it actually does all of those factors do reap all of those factors to make women great and women abusive and make men abusive i think im not trying to make conversation about men im trying to make it about the fact that we are broken i am broken as a society and before it does make us violent and it also makes a person bhangra bulled told this violence the other person being black and i guess also if you look at it racially thats also another conversation to be had but yes it makes everyone of as capable of so many layers there you know and i want to i want to bring the senate and im glad your agreement because i give this to you. Speaking of all the layers it is whats brought people out onto the streets so this is vicki on twitter who says posters with messages like these are being held up in anguish and sorrow against femicide we dont feel safe anymore as young and old women in our country and it seems like there is no justice willing to be served towards femicide takers partakers another person wright said in a personal story of sorts. Being vigilant and staying alert of your surroundings is honestly not even a choice anymore i am always so paranoid and aware then this i just want to break this down a little bit for International Audience is there a story from among the many tragic ones that weve seen in recent weeks that stands out to you that would explain this i wouldnt lose today what this fear is like for so many young women. Well unanimous definitely one of our young people who live literally we left campus as a student to go to the post office to deliver a package to go and have a package sent and what happened was is that the person who works at the post office said that she couldnt send the package at that particular point in time and needed to return a few hours later when she returned to send the package he raped and killed her at the post office. Just afternoon around about half past 2 in the afternoon so in broad daylight just put going to deliver a package she was killed which means we are safe no way the paranoia is actually real if you can just go to deliver a package and get yourself killed that means anything can happen to you on the street i mean women have been abducted in texas and for daily texas a form of public transport and theyve been raped in broad daylight 2 women have been raped in bathroom facilities at schools in Tertiary Institutions older men have been raped in the whole a woman next to the homes actually entered into so this is no space thats safe where there is broad daylight whether its at night no matter what youre wearing 3 month old babies are being raped old women up being raped teenagers up being really women in their mid thirtys up being raped so there isnt a safe person this isnt a safe space young man not being raped we dont see the rape capital of the world theres no way you can tell you where you dont actually see a retaking place where someone whos either a survivor or perpetrator thats thats where were at if you if it hasnt happened to someone whos close us and that done it. As experienced thats it the whole knowledge you know in keeping our respect for quite ham but you are arguably the most important person in this conversation because it is mostly men in these situations who are attacking a winning knowing that what is that like does that film i get a weight of responsibility on your show as how do South African men go it is a huge general question but for you as a South African man how do you navigate through this. Extreme situation where women are not safe wherever they are whatever and they happen to fall. Its really challenging i think i think its really challenging because the conversation thats happening in south africa right now is that men are not taking responsibility and saying you know we are making south africa unsafe for women the conversation that men are having in this country is you know some of them are saying hash tag not all of us but we know that we are complicit in the system we know that we are complicit in a system that promotes rape culture that ensures that we are complicit in in a system that allows gender based violence to continue we are the people that are continuing to rape men to rape men to rape women in this country so i think that our responsibility in this country is for us to take responsibility to 1st acknowledge that we are the people that make women and safe in this country we are the people that make feminized bodies unsafe in this country we are the people that make clear people unsafe in this country from there on we can start working on our how were able to and learn toxic masculinity and because a lot of the time its about power we do a lot of these things to assert a form of power as you only said earlier its because of a system of colonisation and a system of do you mean a zation that black men in this country have the boot against black women in order to take some form of power back from them and so it makes it and save for women in the whole you find that your uncle may be the one who is going to rape your father may be the one thats going to rape you but i think also the conversation that we should be having is that we should allow women to have their own humanity it seems in this country another thing that we do we tend to say but imagine if it was your sister why are we still centering the nation in this conversation why are we still centering men why can we not respect women for being women why are we supposed to this is an island by bringing them closer yeah and bringing them closer to us and saying oh if it was just as if it was your mother no its just the person you know i think that the issue in this country is we rape and we should just stop. Raping and stop killing women and stop beating up women like its not the system is not working yes the system is not working the system is messed up but we are the 1st point of call we are the ones who are saying look we are the ones who are raping people so lets take responsibility for ourselves. So beautifully and i saw the women nodding along as you were talking i wanted to bring this up it is a fantastic thread here and will tweet it out because i cant read them all but im going to share true from that i had seen on twitter who says men should be more involved we are treating this situation like gender based violence is the actual root of the problem and it isnt this starts with how these boys are raised with problematic mindsets that teach them that a womans job is to attend to the needs of men but such a had to goes on to say its not just the men that are poisoned from young because women too are brainwashed into thinking that our place in society is to live up to the expectations of a good wife and thats in quotes who does nothing less than abide by her husbands rules even sexually talk to us about this perspective that it comes from a young age it comes from socialization. I mean it really is. Because our behavior is event behavior right now and just wakes up and once a go assault somebody without having been taught that or havent been exposed to that you know because you dont just wake up and want to rape somebody and this is some sort of conditioning behind theyre also chalets this and that was told to told you that it was normal so yes it is definitely correct and again as little or no law as saying that you know if we can talk about the system all of these things. At the end of the day it lives with as adults who have the responsibility of raising these young. And but also the responsibility lies with who are broken and realize that as adults or young adults so for me its like dealing with this think poll at both levels or at the same time that some of tenure look at what we can do to prevent it from happening and also responding to this massive violence right now and its on the. You were english its under both ends of the actions the same thing right so im sure a country positions about lets get and raise young men but then we can surely expect a broken mirror right now im in a relationship with a 26 year old man and he has suffered things that i could not even imagine when he when he opened im 20 years i know you know and i and i imagine having or thinking about procreating with this individual whom i deeply care about but understanding that right now he doesnt have the avenues to get the the heart that he needs psychologically the help that he needs financially to get that psychological up. Because my healing here id actually just take a take is also critical leg of course for my because theres so much to talk about you said a political level i want to bring in your. President right now so rahm opposer who was talking about gender based violence has been talking about this for some time now as has the South African government yes this is not a new thing this is. Not just because people are marching right now this is the latest that hes been talking about this is the problem let me let me have is that let me give him his 35 seconds so people can hear how he is framing the issue and then when they say you pick up of the back of it this is still around the pows oppressed in south africa. Violence against women is not a womens problem it is not a problem of what a woman said or did what a woman was wearing or where she was walking violence against women is a mans problem it is men who are rape and kill women there is therefore an obligation on the men of our country to act to and such behavior and such crimes wendy said i was looking at the president s twitter feed and he was naming whole communities we need your help we need to come up with a solution businesses and organizations and institutions we need your help your reaction to that. I passionately have for you with him then and im hands on tick out differently need men to take some kind of responsibility because theyre not we different business to stop acting like they are not part of south African Society and actually take some responsibility for the scourge especially those that are that that make profit from drivers from to debase planets such as the alcohol industry so grew with them and that my issue that i have with the speech that he made that is how its the same thing that ive heard before he made the same speech just jam at the chain the summit he made the same speech on the c o n open the Sexual Offenses Court and he signed the declaration of the gender summit so there are only one of 2 things that he said that when you he said is going to ask for parliaments to change legislation so that we have access to the sexual offenders registry you forgot to mention the fact that it hasnt been updated properly and that it doesnt have correct information and that this perpetrators that are on it but lets not talk about those issues the fact is why has it taken so long for us to have access to the fact that a sexual offender was working for a south African Post Office for government when the criminal record and was and managed to go under the radar clearly means that its not waking even for those that do have access to it so the thing that he comes complains about all the time is the fact that he doesnt have resources to allocate to gender based violence in the number one rape capital of the world doesnt make sense i think what we need to do is now take the fight to capital and think wow 90 percent of the South African economy is out in few hands so if theres a scourge of gender based violence in the country over 50 percent of the population is affected as a budget actually start paying a role and actually help us fund the fight thats what i think we need to focus on youre not the only one i want to play this from a member of parliament this is not is the sheriff a member of the Democratic Alliance party and johannesburg and heres what she told us i think that. There is no easy steps to tackle. Him aside but really as to do. A look at the institutions that are meant to protect women and children from gender based violence infanticide and once you do that you will realize that tie is too should know system all the way to part of it is in effect of dealing with issues on the ground and i think once we look at how be constricted. And sure that this translates onto the ground thats to change if we want to see change we have to be different. Its a whole no no ill give this one to you she talks about it being institutional as a structural issue but then take a look at this tweet someone on twitter says my older driver said something relevant today were looking in the wrong place for change asking people from the government who live in a lot of homes to solve crime in the streets we live in whereas we should start in the community and base the perpetrator so this idea of the government to do something and other people saying what can the government do it should start in individual homes. Its quite challenging because i think we live in a country where you know we voted for a particular government and when we think about the elections that happened last year a lot of the big Political Parties including the n c were telling us that theyre going to ensure that theres an end to gender based violence so a lot of us put our faith in certain Political Parties because of their different manifest as in telling us what theyre going to do and Government Funds a lot of structures that are in place so when we think about the criminal Justice System we think about if a woman is raped the 1st people that theyre going to encounter is a Police Station or theyre going to come to the hospital so those are the institutional structures that are in place that we need to do with that when we go to a particular hospital in some instances there isnt a rape kit in order to try to ensure that theres d. N. A. That can be taken when you go to the Police Office they dont treat you with the necessary dignity and respect that they should treat victims and also theres no room for you to be treated theres no information about in nearby Counseling Centers so yes well on the one hand we want to talk about individual perpetrators and our community is taking responsibility we already knew that the Financial Center of yes we also know we also know that this state is the one that is perpetuating all of this crime the fact that we cant access the criminal Justice System as people who have been violated in this country means we are not sable true so its a little bit of a let me put this to you because you have a youve outlined the issues so clearly weve not done much in terms of how do you get bias where are we right now how do you get to a situation where there is almost 0 g. P. A. There should be not there should be none whatsoever let me show you something here my laptop these are the youngsters a cell phone Primary School theyre from east london on the 3rd of september they had marsat assembly so these are the boys are 7 to about 11 years old so the headmaster told them on september the 3rd this have a less. What is easy for us is always to oscar goes to the movies. How do. You. Do it with a. Z. Of things. That. We needed me always easy to me. I mean this is a. Woman with the. Life of one although you said that men should just stop writing to me seems like its very naive its very obvious but naive because that obviously needs to be some help with the help stop at telling youngsters and educating young boys about how they behave around women is is that the way for it. We speak very often about the lack of sexual comprehensive education in South Africans basic Education System i think one of the major problems since that we dont have a comprehensive sexual education so we dont teach children what gender and sex as we dont teach children what consent is and consent in the broader sense right so when you encounter people you just dont go and hide them you just go and take from them you ask them if you can help them if there are certain things so yes education is a very Important Role in ensuring that we teach men how trying to learn but the problem is wed have to overhaul the whole society because we can teach children in a particular place how to behave but if theyre going back to an undesirable kind that is of society yes i better let it go here we let it be yeah we need to like tetovo whole the whole thing and all this i such a giant and that i jump. Around that so the whole country has to go back to school basically thats what youre saying yeah its knowing what we need is a truck a comprehensive social behavioral change programs so we actually did this hiv aids hiv aids response in the country weve got 2200000 adults children everyone what is a condom what is an eye what is hiv aids what are the revenge what are you treated once you have we did that and with hiv aids response so we know how to do social behavioral change programs weve done it we just need to do it for gender based right its that simple its age appropriate for people who are young age appropriate for the old speaks in different languages because weve got 11 official languages in our country and it actually speaks to go through and people government knows this there were about it they dont even know how much its going to cost to do it they have an advocate took the money to make it but our issue is the fact that i do not and this is why were marching to corporate south africa on friday at 3 am in the morning. And telling them that we actually want to shut down censor im going to help fund the fight against a priest that is the editor actually thank you so much for sharing that thank you to all of you for todays conversation and tomorrow well return to south africa to look at whats behind a wave of jena phobic attacks j. J. Bola on twitter says you know phobia and gender based violence in south africa are 2 sides of the same coin theyre connected part of the hierarchical structure that when black men cant punch up words at their oppressors they punch down at those they consider beneath them well talk about that on tuesday as always you can send your thoughts on twitter you tube and al jazeera dot com or the stream by. The way. The stories generate fountains of headlines it seems that much the media is still struggling with how to deal with it with different angles from different perspectives parenting hold can you separate the spin from the facts. The misinformation from the journalism how carefully must you choose your words but some tough stuff has to be said some critics have to be made the listening post on aljazeera. This is aljazeera. Hello from doha everyone on Kemal Santamaria and this is the news hour from aljazeera at least 31 people have been killed in a stampede in iraq at one of the holiest sites in shia islam we will have a live update from karbala also in the news nigerias me the trees accused of Holding Thousands of children captive in the fight against boko haram time dissidents troops to get out of yemen a prominent member of the new Ruling Coalition calls for an urgent withdrawal. And which a way out of the brags that impasse johnsons election plans have been thrown out the
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