While acknowledging that the budget for gender responsive programme is not going to be enough, government departments have been urged to use the budget allocated for the programme properly.

“If the programme is budgeted for, we need to ensure that it is really being used for [its intended use]. We need to… analyse whether the departments are spending the allocated funds on that programme,” said National Treasury Director-General, Ishmail Momoniat.

Momoniat was speaking on the last day of the second Presidentail Summit on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) held in Midrand on Wednesday.

He acknowledged that given the scale of GBVF, whatever government is spending, it will “not be enough”.

“The actual spending is the exercise we have to monitor on a daily basis. We need to do more to address the scourge of GBVF, as the increasing numbers of cases show that we are not doing enough,” he said.

GBVF a humanity problem

Meanwhile, Public Service and Administration Deputy Minister, Chana Pilane-Majake, said GBVF is a humanity problem that needs a collective solution.

“What is important is realising that the answers are not going to come from just one institution, but all institutions, working in unison to try eradicate this mammoth problem that is eating up the lives of women, including children,” Pilane-Majake said.

Highlighting what the faith sector is doing to implement the National Strategic Plan (NSP) on GBVF, Daniela Gennrich, said since 2020, the faith sector has organised a group of activists who came together and began to analyse the issues and developed a programme, which specifically responds to the different pillars of NSP.

“Since then, we… now have over 600 between ourselves and our coalition partners. We say we are people of faith, who speak out, stand up, collaborate, share knowledge and disrupt norms, and decisively with survivours at the centre to end gender-based violence and femicide.”

Explaining where they mostly find resistance when dealing with issues of GBVF, she said there are often “boy clubs” that are very difficult to penetrate.

Source: South African Government News Agency