Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust Archives - Page 2 of 2

Give Your 67 Minutes to Rape Survivors this Mandela Day

Whether you’ve already signed up to attend Rape Crisis’ Mandela Day event on July 15th or have yet to sign up, learn more about Thuthuzela Care Centres (TCC) and how your own community is affected. I spoke with Nomnqweno Nomxhego-Gqada, Thuthuzela Care Centre coordinator, to shed some light on the importance of these care centres and how our Mandela Day event will contribute towards this effort.

Nomnqweno Nomxhego-Gqada

Nomnqweno describes how TCC’s are distinct from other care centres, providing a multitude of services all in one location. In addition, counsellors are present at all times to provide greater accessibility and emotional care. The several services present in a TCC contribute to one goal as stated by Nomnqweno, “[to make] the survivor more aware of what to expect and minimise the level of trauma as [the survivor] will not be telling their story each time they meet a service provider.” TCC’s play an essential role in increasing conviction rates as they allow a greater number of clients to have testing which will provide DNA evidence in court.

10th July 2017/by Sino

One Rape is Too Many

Advocacy

“SA shocked by murders and rapes”…“Spate of women and child murders-a crisis!”

These are just some of the headlines we have seen over the last month in the media, focusing on telling the stories of violence and horror inflicted on women and children.

The immediate reaction for many is one of shock, despair, anger and panic. For many South Africans, their first point of call for expressing these emotions is social media.

News stories are often shared on Facebook and accompanied by comments such as “rape in SA is getting out of hand,” “government is failing us,” etc.

The other reaction is a “knee jerk” one, which begs people to ask, “How did this happen?” Others immediately think, “How can we tackle this crisis?”

But let’s just stop and examine the facts before panicking and throwing around this word “CRISIS”.

19th June 2017/by Sino

#MenAreTrash

Making Change

When I first became aware of the #MenAreTrash hashtag it was never a stand-alone thing. The hashtag always preceded or followed a story, in less than 140 characters on Twitter, about why men are trash. Every reason for using the hashtag was real. Horrific stories of rape and abuse shared the hashtag with downright rude stories about men dissing women and girls for how they looked, dressed, spoke. One tweeter used #MenAreTrash to describe the total stranger who flooded her with unsolicited dick pics. Another posted a picture of her black eye. There was the one who addressed her harasser personally, and another who posted a thread of daily incidents of harassment she had experienced since puberty. It was a long list. Sometimes #MenAreTrash was the single word answer to a tweet that was sexist or inappropriate or ugly towards women.

When I first encountered the hashtag I had no idea how it was going to be taken up, or how much it would trend. But, more importantly, I had no idea how fierce male resistance to it would be.

9th June 2017/by Sino

After the Worst has Happened

Road To Recovery

It is the end of my Honours year. I am at a party to celebrate. I am shivering, despite the warm evening as I stand with a group of my classmates on the patio. We are anxiously waiting to hear if the two girls who left the party to go for a walk and did not return, have been found. Someone comes running towards us out of the darkness. He takes a breath, “the worst has happened”, a pause… “they have been raped”.

I have thought of those words many times in the last five years. I have been recalled to them again in the past few weeks as another spate of highly publicised rapes (and murders) infiltrate my consciousness:

RAPE IS THE WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO A WOMXN

I hear this message echoed in the words of Judge Kgomo as he hands down sentencing to serial rapist Christian Cornelius Julies in the North West. “It is unquestionable that if he was not stopped in his tracks, belatedly though, the devastation of girls and women’s lives would have continued”.

8th June 2017/by Sino

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