PRESS RELEASE
20 March 2006

Organisations launch national "Get on the bus" campaign to stop violence
against women and children

The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, in collaboration
with forty different organisations from around the country, have joined
together to launch a national month-long bus campaign challenging violence
against women and children. The campaign has three main aims:
· To promote communities' awareness of women's rights as set out in the
Domestic Violence Act, the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, the
Maintenance Act and the Firearms Control Act;
· To collect petitions calling on both Parliament and the Department of
Justice and Constitutional Development to consult with civil society around
the finalisation and enactment of the Sexual Offences Bill; and
· To take women and children's voices to parliament by recording their
concerns and experiences of violence.

This campaign is necessary for a number of reasons. First, rape and domestic
violence continue to be widespread and under-reported crimes. One study
surveying 1 306 women in three South African provinces found that 27% of
women in the Eastern Cape, 28% of women in Mpumalanga and 19% of women in
the Northern Province had been physically abused in their lifetimes by a
current or ex-partner. The same study investigated the prevalence of
emotional and financial abuse experienced by women in the year prior to the
study and found that 51% of women in the Eastern Cape, 50% in Mpumalanga and
40% in Northern Province were subjected to these types of abuse (Jewkes et
al, 1999). National figures for intimate femicide (men's killing of their
intimate female partners) suggest that this most lethal form of domestic
violence is prevalent in South Africa. In 1999 8.8 per 100 000 of the female
population aged 14 years and older died at the hands of their partners - the
highest rate ever reported in research anywhere in the world (Mathews et al,
2004). This translates into four women killed every day by their intimate
male partners.

At present the true extent of sexual violence in South Africa is unknown.
StatsSA found that one in two rape survivors reported being raped to the
police (Hirschowitz, Worku and Orkin, 2000), while the Medical Research
Council (MRC) found that one in nine women reported being raped (Jewkes and
Abrahams, 2002). Both studies clearly find rape to be under-reported
although their findings differ as to the extent of such under-reporting. On
the basis of the above studies it can be extrapolated that the 55 114 rapes
reported by the SAPS in their 2004/05 released data is more accurately
calculated as falling somewhere between the region of 110 000 and 495 000
actual rapes having taken place.
Second, while South Africa has progressive laws in place, not enough people
know about them and how to claim the protection of these laws. This is
particularly the case in smaller towns, villages and peri-urban areas of the
country where few organisations exist. The bus aims to combat this situation
through a range of information and advocacy activities. It left Constitution
Hill on 8 March to travel through all nine of South Africa's provinces
stopping to run workshops, share information, collect petitions urging
government to prioritise the Sexual Offences Bill, distribute posters and
pamphlets, and record what communities have to say around how government
departments could better implement laws and policy relevant to rape and
domestic violence. This information, along with the petitions, will be
handed over to parliamentarians when the bus reaches Cape Town on 10 April.

Some of the organisations and networks involved include the National Working
Group on the Sexual Offences Bill, the Western Cape, Northern Cape and
KwaZulu-Natal Networks on Violence Against Women, the Black Sash, Cape Town
Rape Crisis Trust, the Gender Advocacy Project, Masisikumene, GRIP,
Masimanyane, NICRO, Nisaa, Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Task Force,
Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme, Thusanang Advice Centre, West
Coast Women's Network, the Treatment Action Campaign and WomensNet.

Please contact the following people for more information:
Heather van Niekerk 0837083096
Lisa Vetten 0828226725
Nombulelo Nkuna 0735351498

Further information about the campaign is also available on the website
www.womensnet.org.za/buscampaign