PRESS RELEASE
EMBARGO: NONE
07 AUGUST 2020
AL JAMA-AH CONCERNS OVER THE PLIGHT OF WOMEN LIVING IN SHELTERS AND ABUSED WOMEN DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC
The AL JAMA-AH party salutes the many brave women who marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on 09 August 1956. Their chants of “Wathinta abafazi Wathint imbokodo” (You strike the women, you strike a rock), are still reverberating on our streets today.
South African women are still marching and protesting for their rights as citizens of this country. We cannot claim to be totally free if our women are not safe in their homes, work environments and public spaces. Women cannot be free if they are not safe, if they still have to walk kilometers for clean water; if they are homeless and landless, if they are unemployed and living in poverty and when our shelters, places of safety for women and their children are filling because of domestic violence.
We are very disturbed by the increase of Gender Based Violence during the Covid-19 pandemic and the effects it has on women living in shelters and on those women living with abusive spouses. Their plight will be on AL JAMA-AH’s radar on Women’s Day when the party will be hosting a webinar on Sunday morning 09 August 2020.
Also under discussion will be the party’s establishment of an armed response unit at its National Parliamentary Constituency Office. Such a unit will come to the aid of abused women, call for protection orders to be issued by court assessors who are also priests. This is to avoid delays to protect women especially during the pandemic with all its lockdown constraints.
The outcome of discussions on this program will be taken to Parliament later this month at the annual debate on women. Furthermore, as usual, the Party will distribute sanitary pads to learners in child-headed households.
AL JAMA-AH will be hosting a series of webinar programs on issues affecting women such as the insulting entry of “never married” on the death certificates of Muslim-, Jewish and Hindu women; women and food security and women in small business.
For further details contact:
Hon. Ganief Hendricks
Leader of AL JAMA-AH in Parliament
Cell: 082 780 2573