Steenhuisen slams ‘Dr Do Little’ Ramaphosa for GBV efforts

During his virtual reply to oral questions in Parliament on Thursday 18 August, President Cyril Ramaphosa was blasted by his opposite number, DA interim leader John Steenhuisen, for his progress – or rather, lack thereof – when it comes to dealing with the scourge of gender based violence (GBV) that threatens the lives and dignity of South Africa’s women every day. 

He said that Ramaphosa’s tenure as president had produced little hope that the crimes against women and children are being prioritised at all, with the number of reported rapes and sexual offences on the increase. 

GBV Emergency Response Plan announced  

Ramaphosa announced that R1.6 billion would be allocated to an Emergency Response Plan that will focus on eradicating GBV in South Africa. 

“Through the reprioritisation of resources, we were able to allocate around R1.6 billion to implement the Emergency Response Plan in the remaining months of the financial year,” he said. 

“These funds need to be sourced, and a council must be structured to have oversight of how these funds are spent. The council must be an oversight mechanism that ensures that the funds are spent in line with the strategic plan we have developed,” he said.  

“We are committed as government to ensure that money is spent in the right way to achieve our goals in this very important task,” he said. 

GBV stats rising during Ramaphosa’s tenure  

But Steenhuisen, it seems, didn’t buy it. He said that Ramaphosa was all talk, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

“Mr President, you have on many occasions made a variety of commitments to deal decisively with gender based violence, yet ANC actions and on-the-ground results show that gender based violence is clearly not a priority of this government,” he said. 

“The crime statistics released last week show very clearly that under your first term as president, the number of sexual offences and rape have increased.”

He said that Ramaphosa has never made good on the promises he makes to the South African people, and summoned a bit of vintage Steenhuisen sass. 

“As with all matters of accountability with your government, you go from ‘Mr Talk A Lot’ to ‘Dr Do Little’. You’ve made endless commitments to ending this problem, again today speaking about talk shops and funds, but these words are never followed up by action,” he said. 

Testing backlog leaving victims in the lurch  

He went on to lament the continuous issue of backlogs in testing centres that are tasked with producing DNA evidence used to prosecute sexual offenders. 

Steenhuisen said that there are nearly 100 000 uncompleted tests making up the mountainous backlog at testing centres around the country, and said that Ramaphosa’s first port of call should be to ensure that these are reduced. 

“You speak about kits, but there is a catastrophic backlog in the processing of DNA tests amounting to almost 100 000 cases, denying thousands of victims of gender based violence recourse to justice,” he said. 

“What concrete action are you going to take to reduce the backlog in the DNA testing that is keeping perpetrators of gender based violence out of jail and allowing them to prey on women, children and vulnerable people in South Africa?” 

Ramaphosa hopes new National Council will address testing issues 

Ramaphosa congratulated his government’s efforts to ensure that the testing kits – that later are transferred to the inundated laboratories – are available to police who can administer them as soon as a victim of rape or sexual assault reports a case. 

“We have made sure, after having a huge backlog of not having the test kits in our police stations, that they have these so that after incidents of abuse against women and young girls they are able to conduct those tests instantaneously,” he said. 

He said that Steenhuisen was misled by the severity of the backlog issues, but conceded that work needs to be done to ensure that victims have the results they need to prosecute offenders.

“There has indeed been shortage of the availability of the capability to test in certain provinces, the Eastern Cape being a case in point,” he said.

“We are attending to that so that the backlog that you speak about, which doesn’t run into the hundreds of thousands, is reduced substantially. We have made significant progress, starting at a low base but moving forward and doing a lot.”

He said that the emergence of the National Council that he announced earlier would assist with these very issues. 

“We are being strengthened in this effort by partners that we are working with, The National Council is going to be effective that will ensure that all the matters you talk about are attended to.”

“It won’t be a ‘talk shop’. It will be a council that has a majority membership of civil society entities across the country and they are going to have hawk’s eyes on every measure that government needs to implement.”