Organisation brings fight against GBV to rural women

An activist organisation has raised concern about the lack of access to resources that rural women encounter in the fight against Gender Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF).

The issue was raised during the Cape Town leg of the multi-city anti-GBVF march organised by a host of social movements.

It was also held in Sasolburg in the Free State and Kempton Park in Gauteng.

March participants came from across the Cape Metro and rural Western Cape towns such as De Doorns, Klapmuts and Witzenberg.

Naomi Betana of the Witzenberg Justice Coalition says, “The organisation is a women-led, feminist, activist movement and it’s important for us to join these types of activities because we are doing women-related things and it’s very concerning to us when women are getting killed.

We do live in an area where women also get raped on a daily basis, where children are getting raped on a daily basis and having to live in a rural community: resources are very difficult, so it’s difficult to get to the police station, it’s difficult to get to the court system, it is difficult to access even very good attorneys, because rural women don’t have these resources.

That’s why it was so important for us to travel two hours, come into Cape Town and just to support other women.”