Men need to be the champions in the fight against women abuse and femicide

South Africa – Vodacom is launching a campaign called Be the light to call everyone’s attention to the scourge of gender violence and appeal to South African men to become change agents and play an active role in ridding our society of gender violence. President Cyril Ramaphosa has appealed to SA’s corporate sector, civic bodies and churches in the society to partner with government as it steps up its fight against gender-based violence. The campaign is launched at a time when the country is gripped by a spate of senseless violence against women and children.

Vodacom corporate affairs chief officer Takalani Netshitenzhe said: “The truth of the matter is that, in recent times, we have seen more and more cases of women dying by the hands of men in the country, so it is about time we shifted the conversation on gender violence to men, so they can be part of the solution.”

As a long-standing partner of government and civil society organisations that champion the rights of women and children, Vodacom and the Department of Social Development worked together to launch the gender-based violence (GBV) command centre in 2014. Vodacom contributed R4million to this partnership for the creation of a call centre that is managed by trained government-employed social workers. In December 2016, a Skype capability was launched at the call centre to give access to the victims of gender-based violence from the deaf community. The call centre receives an alarming average of 22,000 calls per month. These calls result in tele-counselling at the centre and some calls, based on the severity of the case, are referred to the community-based social workers and the South African Police Service.

For the 2020 calendar year-to-date (January to 30 June), the command centre has received a staggering 48,583 calls of which 2,079 are GBV-related, compared to 87,092 for the full year (2019), of which 1,846 were GBV-related.

In the two months after the lockdown was announced, the command centre received 33,715 calls, of these 1,427 were GBV-related, up from 133 GVB-related cases for the period 1-26 March 2020. Although we are aware of under-reporting on GBV cases, these recorded GBV-related numbers paint a bleak picture of a society that has a deep-seated problem of GBV.

The centre can be reached as follows:

• By dialling 0800 428 428 or via USSD on *120*7867#.

• A Skype line ‘HelpMeGBV’ for members of the Deaf Community.

• An SMS-based line ‘31531

Vodacom press release extracts, 2 June 2020