The members of the Africa Best 350 (AB350) pledged to play a major role in fighting the stigma of gender-based violence (GBV) in the communities.
They marched on the streets of Mthatha, last week, pledging whatever they could in order to fight GBV.
Responding to the plight of vulnerable women in the western region area has propelled AB350 Bus Services to partner with the Department of Transport and Community Safety to fight this challenge.
According to the transport executive chairperson, Simlindile Hintsa, they wanted to ensure that they play their role in ensuring that they tell their passengers about this problem. He said they were transporting a lot of people, so it would be easy to pass the message about GBV to many people.
“Our political icons, who fought before, were not fighting for this, but they wanted us to live normal lives. Instead of living that life, we are now facing another challenge.
“We are standing up in order to raise awareness about this,” said Hintsa.
He said they were responding to the call that was made by the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, that all the businesses should stand up and fight this stigma.
Hintsa added that if they stood up, as men, the perpetrators would be afraid to continue abusing women and children.
According to Hintsa, they started this awareness campaign in Mthatha because there were a lot of reported cases of GBV. He confirmed that they would host this campaign annually and they were planning that, as from next year, they host campaigns with the aim of educating community members.
The acting district commissioner for OR Tambo, Brigadier Vukile Ntandane said, as the police, they were committing themselves to ensuring that they were always available if the community wanted to report something.
He said they were ready to work with anyone who was willing to play a major role in saying no to GBV.
“The community includes all the people, even street vendors. We are always appealing to people to ensure that they do neighbourhood watches, so that it may be easy to see if there is a problem in their neighbourhoods,” said Ntandane.
