Issue 10 Articles
Sonke Annual Report 2010/2011: Letter from the Chair of the Board
In the last year, Sonke has continued to grow, and its efforts to combat sexism and gender-based violence have deepened. There has been no clearer sign of the organisation’s commitment to a non-sexist South Africa, than its ground-breaking case against Julius Malema, in the Equality court. The fact that the Court ruled that Malema’s careless words were in fact hate speech, is incredibly important in a context in which every single day, women are harassed and intimidated by ordinary men.
Paying attention to men’s use of HIV services critical to success of SA’s new 2012-2016 NSP
December 1, 2011 is an enormously significant date for all South Africans. On that day, World AIDS Day, the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) will launch the new and finalized 2012-2016 National Strategic Plan for HIV, STIs and TB, which has been developed over the last year. The plan has ambitious goals, including the reduction of new HIV infections by at least 50% using combination prevention approaches; and getting at least 80% of eligible patients on antiretroviral treatment (ART), with 70% alive and on treatment five years after initiation.
One Man Can’s First Clinic in Gugulethu: Our Pride
Many studies show that men are under-represented in health services, including HIV services.
Men get tested less than women. For instance, results from South Africa’s recent national HIV testing campaign reveal that men made up only 30% of the nearly 13 million people who got tested. Men also access HIV treatment later than women and often show up for services with severely compromised immune systems. In South Africa, about 55% of those living with HIV are women but more than two-thirds of patients receiving public sector ART are female. Once on treatment men are more likely than women to interrupt treatment, to be lost to follow-up and to die while on treatment.
Public Health and Law
Last winter, I packed my bags and headed to Cape Town for a two‐month internship with Sonke Gender Justice Network. As a research assistant in the Policy, Research and Advocacy unit, I would be working under Emily Keehn, a UCLA Law School Graduate and recent Cape Town transplant on a project involving the South African Prison system. The opportunity involved writing a publication mapping the pertinent laws and policies relating to HIV and AIDS prevention and education and violence prevention within detention facilities.
Launch of the MenCare campaign in South Africa
The South African MenCare campaign was launched in early August at the Nike Football for Hope Centre in Soweto. MenCare – A Global Fatherhood Campaign – is coordinated by Instituto Promundo, based in Rio de Janeiro and Washington DC, Sonke and the MenEngage alliance as an effort to promote men’s involvement as fathers and as caregivers. A key partner in the South African campaign is the Department of Social Development, and the minister of the department gave an encouraging address at the event. The launch was a joyful celebration of men who care, and leaders from government, business and civil society attended. The campaign is now being implemented across South Africa.
Sonke goes to the 2011 National Women’s Conference
The Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities hosted a national women’s conference to mark the beginning of women’s month celebrations for 2011 under the theme Working Together for Equal Opportunities and Progress for All Women on the 31 July to 3 August.
Women’s day in Taung, North West province
This Women’s Month, August 2011, Sonke collaborated with various partners nationwide to celebrate the women in our lives and communities. Thami Nkosi, a One Man Can trainer on our community radio project, was invited to speak at a Women’s Day event hosted by our partner radio station Vaaltar FM in Taung, North West province.
A More Social Sonke
The world is changing. Many of us lead parallel lives, one in our physical bodies, and one or more as digital entities. As resistant as many are to this phenomenon, it is very real and here to stay.
Gender Justice at Home and Away: Reflections on a Trip to the USA
Gender inequality is not only a local, African or ‘global south’ problem, but a worldwide one. However, in South Africa we face problems stemming from gender inequality that differ from those experienced elsewhere on the globe.
With the goal of sharing differing experiences, information and expertise, the U.S. Department of State (DOS) sponsored an International Visitor Leadership project titled “Gender Violence”, a Project for South Africa, administered by the Mississippi Consortium for International Development.
Mogoeng Mogoeng: New ConCourt... Follower
On September 3 and 4, Sonke attended the hearing of the Chief Justice nominee, Mogoeng Mogoeng, before the JSC. We danced, we tweeted, we got angry, we got on TV making shocked faces, and we spent at least ten hours of our lives with South Africa’s new Chief Justice.
Men and Gender Equality: Between the Urgency and the Confusion
Dr Gary Barker’s Helen Joseph Memorial Lecture, University of Johannesburg – 10 August
“In the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, there is a collection of manuscripts and folios written by and for midwives in 17th Century Elizabethan England. They include the herbal remedies and treatments of ailments of the time that were passed from midwife to midwife. One of them is a matter-of-fact description of how to help a pregnant woman not to miscarry after being kicked in the abdomen by her drunken husband. This is described in naturalistic terms as if this is simply what some men do.”
One Man Can goes to Bushbuckridge
For the next three years, Dumisani Rebombo, Sonke’s One Man Can Manager, will run a new One Man Can (OMC) project in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga and Limpopo. Bushbuckridge Local Municipality (LM), in the central lowveld, plays host to Wits Rural Facility (WRF), not far from the Kruger National Park.
