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The Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Lulu Xingwana strongly condemns the brutal heinous rape and murder of Dudu Zozo of Thokoza in the East Rand.

“We strongly condemn and will not tolerate any act of harassment, intimidation or violence against any member of society especially women, children, people with disabilities, the lesbian and gay community, says Xingwana”.

It is our duty as a society to uphold and protect the rights of women, children and people with disabilities, including the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-sexual and intersex community. South Africa is a democratic state with a constitution which respects the rights of all members of society without any form of discrimination according to sex, creed, and so forth. It is our responsibility as communities to respect and value the rights of every citizen.

It is with utter disgust and hurt that we still witness this kind atrocities in our communities. We therefore take this opportunity to call on members of the community who have heard, seen or witnessed something to inform the police. At this stage, any information will assist the law enforcement agencies in their investigation to apprehend the perpetrators.

This crime happened in our community, in our neighbourhood; someone must have heard or seen something. The law of this country protects whistle blowers who may also want to remain anonymous and therefore we take this opportunity to request that anyone in our community with information should assist our law enforcement agencies.

We should not remain silent because in that way we will be promoting and protecting the perpetrators who answerable to these crimes. We therefore condemn corrective rape and all forms of hate crimes and this government will not condone and tolerate such. Those that are practicing such acts must know that they are committing crimes against humanity and once they are caught they will be dealt with the harshness they deserve.

Our department, as the Coordinator, has established the Council Against Gender Based Violence that is representative of civil society organisations, government and Private sector, responsible for the coordination of programs to prevent, communicate, support, respond, monitor and evaluate progress by all sectors of society in dealing with all forms of gender based Violence. The Council is also responsible for the 365 days campaign against Gender based Violence.

The Council will be rolling out Awareness campaigns, dialogues in communities to deal with behavioural and attitudinal problems that perpetuate these crimes in our society. We therefore urge and call upon all sectors of society to work together with the Council.