End GBVF 100-Day Challenges

Mogale City municipality hosted a leadership design workshop on “End GBVF 100-Day Challenges” at Burgershoop Community Centre on Tuesday 23 July 2024. The purpose of the workshop was to set a goal on how to implement the Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) National Strategic Plan (NSP), a call emanating from the office of the president. 

For 2024, the focus is on institutions like TVET colleges, municipalities and the department of justice to work on implementing the 100-Days Challenges beginning from 9 August to 16 November. Municipalities like Mogale City signed a memorandum of understanding to ensure that they comply and push the mandate.

MMC for Social Development and Health, Wonderful Segolodi welcomed everyone to the session. The workshop was facilitated by Nomvula Mjuza, Mogale City Social Development Manager and directed by Lungile Mdingi from West Rand District Municipality. In his opening, Mdingi said, “Our goal is to deal with GBVF. Our purpose is to at least make all the people in the West Rand know about our seriousness in terms of GBVF.”

The programme consisted of a day long activity where NSP-GBVF pillars were discussed through a collaboration among participating organisations and stakeholders. This was to ensure that the 100-Days Challenges would take off with a goal to work on, as well as a decision on a team of leadership who would work on the plan.  

Four of the six NSP pillars were discussed by the groups in hope of shaping the 100-Day Challenges goal.  Mjuza challenged everyone by asking, “What is it that we are doing in our groups currently to address issues of GBVF?” The groups would then link their answers to the pillars. She then added, “We cannot end GBVF if we don’t work and commit ourselves.”

The pillars focused on were:

• Prevention and Rebuilding Social Cohesion
• Justice Safety & Protection
• Response Care Support and Healing
• Economic Power

Upon an extensive discussion of the pillars, teams presented what their organisations were doing to end GBVF. They went on to map out the goal to implement in the 100 days and finally agreed to focus on pillar 2 and 3 where the goal will eventually come to life. The session will be reported to SALGA by the end of September. “We are not reporting because we want to tick the boxes, we are reporting because we want to make an impact to the community.” Mjuza emphasised.

The workshop was a success, and the real work begins now that the first step has been performed. Mjuza encouraged the participants by saying, “100-days is about making decisions that are hard or impossible to achieve but are achievable.”