The Masimanyane Women’s Support Centre held a three day Rural Women’s Leadership Dialogue at Rhodes
University which ended on Tuesday.
The Masimanyane Women’s Support Centre held a three day Rural Women’s Leadership Dialogue at Rhodes
University which ended on Tuesday.
The dialogue was aimed at discussing issues confronting rural women and empowering women faced with poverty, abuse and other challenges such as HIV/Aids and human trafficking. The conference was attended by delegates from women’s organisations around the Eastern
Cape.
“We wanted to create a space for women to talk and share their experiences around these issues and to
give each other information about resources available to us,” said Linda Brukwe, the manager at Ikhwezi Support Centre in Cathcart. She also said that the biggest challenge facing women is the lack of information and that she hopes that the Eastern Cape government will focus on giving women access to information that can help develop themselves.
Brukwe said it is time that women come together and discuss how they can be involved in fighting violence
against women and children.
In black communities domestic violence is not viewed as a crime but something that Rural women’s silent roar must be kept within families.
“There are women who have been turned away at police stations and told to work it out with their husbands because domestic violence is viewed as a family affair,” said Brukwe.
Women need to play an active role in changing the mindset that keeps women in a vulnerable position. Thabisa Bobo from the One in 9 campaign said that women do not report cases of abuse because they are often further abused at police stations where they are supposed to be receiving help and support. Bobo also said that now it is time that the the campaign starts finding ways to support the majority of women who do not report cases of sexual violence.
Masimanyane Women’s Support Centre is a non-profit women’s organisation based in East London. The organisation’s main aim is to build the capacity of women as leaders for change. Women have to know the law and be acquainted with the human rights instruments at their disposal to be able to bring about change.
Brukwe believes women’s development will never progress if women continue to pull each other down.
“We’ll never achieve anything if there is no unity among women. Now is the time to create a strong voice for women, if we continue working as individuals we won’t succeed,” she said.
Also discussed at the conference were issues of poverty as it strips mothers of their dignity when their children go to bed hungry and they feel they have failed to provide for them.
Child trafficking is a serious problem with Brukwe fearing that children will be at higher risk of falling victims to this during the events surrounding the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
Fezeka Mantakana, the director of Peddie Women’s Support Centre said that next March there will be a delegation of women attending a United Nations conference focusing on rural women and HIV/Aids. “We want this delegation to address the issues and resolutions that we come out with at this conference,” she said.
