Domestic violence in the spotlight

“We are so happy that the government has come to a realisation that the staging of interactive dialogues in the communities by victims of crime and stakeholders is more important towards fighting crime.”

Those were the words of the Makhado Municipality's acting mayor, Cllr Frank Tshililo, during the 16 Days of Activism outreach event at the Makhado Show Grounds on Tuesday.

Tshililo thanked the Department of Women and all stakeholders who made it possible for the group dialogues, which were held at the show grounds, to be a success. “It also became apparent during the dialogues that alcohol abuse remains one of the major contributing factors to domestic violence and the abuse of women and children in our communities,” Tshililo said.

He said that the programme involved people of all age groups and that aspect alone made it effective in that it was inter-generational. “When our little ones get together under one roof with elders, there's a good chance that the uplifting of moral regeneration among both young and old will be fostered,” he said.

The manager for stakeholders' coordination and outreach activities in the national Department of Women, Mr Godfrey Nematenda, said that the event formed part of the outreach activities of the 16 Days of Activism for no violence against women and children, which was recently launched by Prez Jacob Zuma.

“As government, we decided to move away from sending delegates to deliver keynote speeches to the communities and then it ends there,” he said. “We wanted to initiate dialogues where both victims of crime, possible victims of abuse and stakeholders would try and seek possible solutions to the abuse of women and children.”

The dialogues, facilitated by departments such as the Department of Justice, the Department of Correctional Services and the Department of Women, proved to be a success in that it involved children and youths from different youth centres and projects that support orphans and children from vulnerable backgrounds.

News - Date: 05 December 2016

Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

Email: [email protected]