From disproportionate and targeted violence against the working class and poor carried out by the state to the escalation of gender violence in the home, the Covid-19 National Lockdown is exacerbating the existing disposition towards violence in our society. 

In the first week of lockdown, 2,320 complaints of gender-based violence were lodged: 37% higher than the weekly average for the 87,290 domestic violence cases reported to police during 2019. This is only the reported cases. 

Across the world we are seeing a similar trend. In Argentina, the slogan el femicido no se toma cuarentena, or ‘femicide does not quarantine’, clearly points to the violence that has been inflamed by the global lockdown. In every single country, reports come in of increased violence against women.

The Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party stays firm in our analysis that these perverse acts of patriarchal violence stem from the deeply violent nature of capitalism and its production of poverty, inequality and want in the majority of our people. 

As the Covid-19 crisis progresses, the lockdown of the entire population, made up of 10.4 million unemployed and over 30 million more living on less than the already insubstantial minimum wage of R3200, is fanning the flames of already existing structural dysfunctionalities and generally conducive conditions for violence against women and children. 

The continuing violences are not simply the disturbing actions of individuals but reflect the deeper sickness of our society: one where the social system thrives on using the most unimaginable forms of violence to debase, oppress and exploit those in more physically, economically and socially vulnerable positions. 

Whilst women might have had more freedom to maneuver before the lockdown, the crisis of Covid-19 acts as an additional catalyst in a situation that was already rapidly boiling over:

• 1 in 3 women in South Africa experience sexual abuse
• 2 in 5 women are beaten by their partners
• Half of all working women will be sexually harassed at work
• 1 in 15 murders of women will be at the hands of their partner
• In the period of 12 months, a total of 2,771 women were murdered (2019)
• 443,387 rapes were logged with the police over past decade, and 40,000 rapes were recorded in 2018
• 41% of people raped are children 
• It is estimated that only 1 in 9 rape cases are reported 
• Long before Covid-19, South Africa was losing a vicious battle of the safety, security and, ultimately, equality of its people. 

Women are exposed to these different forms of violence and discrimination because the world we live in is one that thrives on inequality. Women in SA make 27% less money than their male counterparts. The capitalist system needs low-income and unpaid work to exist, and has found ways of justifying cheap and slave-like labour as the lot of women, immigrants, youth, black people etc. It requires living and work conditions to be increasingly unstable and produces precarity in the lives of the young people, who are becoming increasingly more disposable.

We must see this for the structural manifestation of a sickly society. In doing so we can identify that under global capitalism, the inequality of women and the oppression of those most vulnerable stems from the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class. The oppression of women and gender inequality, with its most brutal manifestation in GBV and femicide, are pillars of the capitalist system, and as such need to be thoroughly dealt with. 

In the short term, we must confront the daily manifestations of gender based discrimination and violence. To our members who must play a leading role in our communities, we call for action on the following:

From essential services workers to the elderly, we must ensure that all at-risk groups have been identified, properly informed and adequately equipped by state officials within our communities, in order to maintain the necessary safeguards for the prevention of infection. We must ensure that all are receiving the care and community support that they may need.

Organize community care teams for children, as we are seeing some comrades do in their communities. Many parents continue to work as essential services and have no care options with schools being closed. This also helps to move the burden from grandparents and the elderly, who are part of higher risk groups of the population.

We must quickly identify and properly inform community members of the health crisis and of the different emergency responses and resources that are available to us.

We must define a brief and simple protocol and plan, identifying steps to react collectively to cases of gender based violence. For example: an emergency number to call or a group to go to, accompanied by a specific community response. This includes members identifying where you can stay and who to turn to, as well as circulating a list with emergency phone numbers and help applications.

Today, the Presidency issued a notice addressing GBV. It was more of the same rhetoric that we have heard condemning GBV and vague proposals for intervention. Empty of programs that might address the reality of the situation, it made no explicit mention of what emergency protocols exist, how people experiencing GBV should follow them and so on. It commended police, in a time where much of the GBV is perpetuated by state armed forces. Whilst it is clear that the state is failing in the struggle against GBV, we need urgent interventions that can only be made at state level. We therefore demand:

• Mass awareness campaigns that provide all the emergency protocol and services in cases of Gender Based Violence.
• Immediate arrest of those accused perpetrators of GBV, with no delay, and an end to all public harassment and humiliation by police!
• Safe, publicly funded transport that drops workers at their front door.
• There must be adequate street lighting at night, for all.
• Quickly allocate safe houses for those who can no longer find safety in the home.

In the long term, we need to build a program that begins to set up the conditions for the abolition of the system of inequality that continues to subordinate women. All people must unite and fight the system that produces it together, for full equality of the sexes, races, nationalities, ethnicities, physical abilities and people of different sexual orientations and genders now!

As comrade Samora Machel of the Mozambican liberation struggle explained: “The emancipation of women is not an act of charity, the result of a humanitarian or compassionate attitude. The liberation of women is a fundamental necessity for the revolution, the guarantee of its continuity and the precondition for its victory.” 

Issued by Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party