MEMBERS of the Anglican Servers of Southern Africa, from the Anglican Diocese of Mthatha appealed to men to stop abusing women and children.
The appeal came during a march through the streets of Mthatha, last week.
The chief server from the Anglican Diocese in Mthatha, Khanya Geca, said they started planning this march in August, after they saw what was happening to women in the OR Tambo district and in other areas. He said this problem was also happening in the rural areas.
“We are showing people that we do care about this problem, and we wish this message could reach the local areas that we are saying no to gender-based violence (GBV). We took a decision to stand up after we saw that this was increasing every day.
“When women and children are abused, we always feel the pain. That is why we decided to stand up. By doing this we are trying to show the victims that we support them,” said Geca.
Geca said even though they hosted this March last year, it seems as if there is no difference because the numbers of women who are abused are increasing every day. “We appeal to government to take tough action about this because it is painful.”
One of the servers, Siphosethu Kwetana, said by doing this, they hoped that there would be a change after this initiative. She said they were raising awareness around abuse, rape, forced marriage and human trafficking.
“We are saying, ‘Stop GBV.’ In our families we are always taught to respect other people. This is very important because if you have respect, you cannot abuse someone else. As the youth, we believe that we have a bright future, but it is destroyed by these things,” said Kwetana.
The former social worker, Nomsa Titus, said that youth should be educated about these programmes because they were the future of the world.
She said it was important that they should be informed and have knowledge about these problems.
“We must teach and support our children in this initiative because this is the major problem that we are facing,” said Titus.
