Africa-Press – South-Africa. After the Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) Response Fund announced it would look into wearables and apps to help tackle gender-based violence, an activist has labelled this as “ridiculous”, and said the fund should not waste its time.
The fund, launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa in February last year, said in its annual report that it would focus its efforts and resources on helping South Africa address the scourge of gender-based violence and femicide.
According to the report, opportunities to investigate the use of accessible, scalable digital innovations to prevent and reduce the spate of GBVF were underexplored.
It said it was working to understand the landscape of current apps and tools, and investigating new digital tools and technologies that could be deployed to scale across the country (including rural areas) at minimum cost to citizens to curb or prevent GBVF.
These include wearables that can be used to alert authorities, apps that can be used to record incidences (evidence collection), and alert citizens about offenders on the criminal database in the vicinity and GBVF hotspot alerts.
However, Bronwyn Litkie, the founder of SA Women Fight Back said: “I think that is a ridiculous way of trying to solve things; so many people have done this in the past.”
Litkie said there was already an emergency response app on the market.
“They don’t work; I am sorry to say. There are people in the rural areas, there are people in the Eastern Cape that don’t have access to data, that don’t have cellphones, and no cellphone reception. It is just something that they should not be wasting time on and money on and resources on,” she said.
“If they need to eradicate GBV, they need to start looking into creating laws that actually stop these monsters from doing what they are doing.
However, Jason Behrens – founder of NPO Jason’s Angels, which focuses on survivors of gender-based violence – said the idea of apps was “great” because they sped up the process, “especially looking at things like after hours”.
He, however, added that it was vital that they work.
Meanwhile, the two had said the cash pledges from the public to help fight gender-based violence since the response fund’s launch showed less confidence in the government.
GBVF Response Fund gets R162 million in pledges to help tackle gender-based violence
In its report, the fund announced it had secured R162 million in pledges, but that only R65 000 had come from the public.
Behrens said that when people donated their money, there was often no transparency.
“They are donating to organisations, but they are sort of left in the dark, and there are no follow-ups to account for where the money has been dispensed to,” he said.
“The problem is when we start asking where the money is, nobody knows. Victims go to shelters, and when they get there, they will experience secondary trauma because the shelters just don’t have a supply of food and clothes and things that they need.”
He said his comments were not a reflection of the “most loving” people running the shelters.
“So, the problem with the financial donations is that they are going to the wrong people. They need to go directly to the shelters or organisations like us, where we have an open book policy. We make sure whatever we receive gets to where it is intended to be.”
For Litkie, the issue of finances is “quite a sensitive subject”.
She said she was not aware of one GBV organisation that had received funding, and that she had been asking for a list for months.
“It is rather frustrating because here we are working on the skin of our teeth because SA Women Fight Back doesn’t have one funder, and when we do ask for assistance, we are not getting anything. We would like to start referring some of the victims to the GBV organisations that have the funds, but we have no idea who they are.”
Litkie said the small public donations were a sign that people didn’t trust the government.
“They don’t know that it [the money] is actually going to GBV organisations. If anything, the money should be spent on resources for the police. It should be spent on victim support, but nothing ever goes where it should be.”
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