President Cyril Ramaphosa has called for greater intolerance for gender-based violence in South Africa amid continued femicide.
Ramaphosa was speaking on Wednesday night during the second virtual presidential imbizo, which is aimed at engaging with communities on pandemic and its impact on society.
He said his administration was concerned that despite efforts made to do away with the scourge of abuse perpetrated against women and children, the behaviour continued with little restraint.
“There are attitudes that are ingrained in the behaviour of men in our country, the patriarchy where men feel that they own women, they can control women and they can do whatever they like to women. That needs to be addressed,” he said.
Ramaphosa also weighed in on the economic damage caused by Covid-19 and the subsequent national lockdown, which has now resulted in job losses as companies embarked on massive retrenchments.
“We have received news that many more people have now lost their jobs. We have got up to 3 million people who would have lost their jobs and Covid-19 is having that devastating impact around the world.
“In the US, two months ago, people had lost 26 million jobs. We are now in the midst of Covid-19 and this is what we are having to deal with,” he said.
He said the government had a task to devise a robust response to avoid worse socio-economic effects as a result of the job losses, which added to SA’s high unemployment rate.
“Our response has got to be pointed so that we protect our people as we move on,” he said.
More than 300 000 South Africans have been infected with Covid-19 and around 4 500 deaths have been linked to the deadly and infectious pandemic.
Government has responded with returning some of the hard lockdown measures which were imposed in recent months, including a night-time curfew and a ban on liquor sales.
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Source: IOL
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