Good practice for addressing violence against women in South Africa

Abstract

This report reviews civil society efforts to address violence against women. The levels of death and injury that arise from violence in general in South Africa are incredibly high for a country not at war. One of the key drivers of violence in the country is gender-based violence (GBV) (Seedat, van Niekerk, Jewkes, Suffla, & Ratele, 2009). GBV, according to Dunkle et al. (2004) is commonly taken to comprise physical, sexual, and psychological abuse from intimate partners, sexual violence by nonpartners, sexual abuse of girls, and acts such as trafficking women for sex (230). Men may be targets of such violence (due to sexual orientation, for instance see Mkhize, Bennet, Reddy & Moletsane (2010)). However, women constitute the vast majority of people experiencing gender-based violence and men the majority of perpetrators (WOMANKIND worldwide, 2007: 8). Perpetrators are, in fact, most likely to be intimate male partners and the most common form of violence against adult women is intimate partner violence (Van Vylder, 2005). Violence in South Africa is thus profoundly gendered, as this reportr will explain (Seedat et al., 2009: 1011). This is evident when one considers violence-related statistics.