/ MEDIA STATEMENT / The content on this page is not written by Polity.org.za, but is supplied by third parties. This content does not constitute news reporting by Polity.org.za.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) is calling on the South African Police Services to intensify their search for eight-year old Amahle Thabethe. The little girl from Tsakane in Ekurhuleni has been missing since April. According to media reports her family is desperate for information on her whereabouts.

She was lured away from home allegedly by a stranger in April 2019, and has not been seen since. We are calling on the SAPS to intensify their efforts in finding this little girl, and to prioritize investigations into her disappearance. As a union we support efforts to increase awareness of her disappearance so she may be found and we call on our members in the community of Tsakane and surrounding areas to assist by participating in search parties.

We are alarmed by the increasing levels of violence against women and children, and we condemn these attacks in the strongest terms. We are a Marxist-Leninist inspired trade union and it is our duty to fight for the equality of men and women, and, to create a loving and safe space for children everywhere. During the month of August, which is when we celebrated Women, thirty women were murdered by their male partners.

This week the body of 14 year-old Janika Mallo was found in her grandmother backyard after she had been raped and beaten to death with a rock. 19 year-old UCT student Uyinene Mrwetyana was raped and bludgeoned to death inside the Clareinch Post Office in the Western Cape. Boxing champion Leighandre (Baby Lee) Jegels was shot and killed by her boyfriend, who was allegedly abusing and threatening her.

Four children aged sixteen, ten, six and four were hanged by their father in Pinetown in Durban.

We want to express our deepest condolences to the family members and friends of these women, who were senselessly murdered in the prime of their lives. We are heartbroken by the deaths of innocent children who were killed in the most violent and vicious way. They are just a handful of victims who are maimed, molested, and killed in South Africa every day. It is clear that Gender Based Violence has reached catastrophic levels in our country and we are losing our sisters, our daughters, our mothers and our children in the most violent and brutal ways. We cannot continue to be outraged every time another woman or child is killed, raped or murdered in our country.

We need a lasting solution to this crisis which is destroying our society. Hashtags like #MenAreTrash have become popular because women have had enough of being victimized and brutalized. Statistically speaking, the perpetrators remain overwhelmingly male and this means that there is a need for men to play a critical role in ending this crisis.
 
The criminal justice system is part of the problem. It has failed to guarantee the safety of the most vulnerable sectors of our society. Often women are exposed to secondary victimization when they go to the police station to report rape, abuse and sexual assault, and this is made worse when the alleged perpetrators are released on bail, or set free as a result of the failure of the judicial system. 

The courts are often a hostile environment for children who have been brutalized, making it difficult for victims of abuse to come forward and expose their oppressors. In the short term, harsher sentencing for perpetrators and increasing the capacity of the police to investigate such cases will assist. As will the establishment of specialized courts to deal with child and woman abuse cases. But this is not a permanent solution to dealing with violence in our society.

South Africa is an extremely violent country with an average of 57 murders per day. Our society was built on racism, patriarchy and violence, from the days of colonialism, to Apartheid. The legacy of the inequality of apartheid remains deeply entrenched in our society because of Capitalism. It has replaced Apartheid as the oppressor of the working class, because it is a system based on the violent exploitation of the working class, and women in particular.

Today, African women continue to be abused, harassed and victimized. In the workplace, they are victims of sexual harassment, they are lowest paid and the most exploited, only to come home, and experience abuse at the hands of their partners, husbands or lovers.
 
Capitalism has deepened poverty and created the most unequal society in the world. 30,4 million people, (half the population) go to bed hungry, and the suffering of the working class and the poor is worsening daily. Capitalism is in a deep crisis and the violence we are experiencing is part of that crisis.

The working class is the only class which can save us from catastrophe. We must unite as the working class, both men and women, to defeat Capitalism and patriarchy and all of the other social ills associated with it. We must create a caring Socialist society which focuses on the well-being of each and every human being, especially our children. Socialism is based on the love of the working class and it is only through this system that we can create a humane, caring and genuinely equal society.

Aluta continua!
The struggle continues!

Issued by NUMSA