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Coalition set to address and remedy GBVH in workspaces.
The Sandton based Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) Response Fund and stakeholders hosted an insightful symposium in Hyde Park, where a Private Sector Coalition (PSC) was established as a collaborative effort to address gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) in the workplace.
Stakeholders gathered at the symposium, included presenters and speakers from organizational spaces operating across South Africa within various corporate sectors, including mining, financial, and construction.
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The first half highlighted by a keynote address by CEO of Anglo American’s management board in South Africa Noliha Fakude. The address was followed by presentations from PwC CEO Shirley Machaba, national director of public prosecution advocate Shamila Batohi, Ireland Ambassador Austin Gormley, and UN resident co-ordinator Nelson Muffah. The UK High Commission in South Africa, Anthony Phillipson, joined the symposium digitally, through a video presentation.
The key note address by Fakude presented on the legwork that’s been done towards availing interventions for victims and survivors of GBVH in the workspace, using practical examples from the mining industry. Machaba shared the strategy employed by PwC to foster a sustainable professional working environment, without GBVH; and Batohi spoke about best practice institutions that employ the multi-disciplinary approach in addressing systemic problems, and victim empowerment.
GBVF Response Fund CEO and Bryanston resident Sazini Mojapelo contextualised the symposium during an interval. Mojapelo painted a powerful portrait of how impactful the PSC can be in terms of preventing GBVF and GBVH in the workplace through critically vetting peoples’ personal backgrounds ahead of employing them to opportunities.
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“To give you an example which will make you realise the importance in what she said, [in the case of] Uyinene Mrwetyana: if we had known, if we had a sexual offenders’ list made public, and processes were had to actually vet people, like we do criminal checks, she’d still be alive today – because he was an employee at the post office,” Mojapelo asserted. “But, because our systems are not set up in a manner that allows us to check sexual offenders, we’re therefore unable to actively deal with GBV. Why are their identities shrouded in secrecy? They should not be.”
Furthermore, Mojapelo spoke about the PSC’s approach of dealing with GBVH at the workplace through a three-step framework. The framework is designed to protect victims and survivors, prevent GBVH at work, and enforcing the law when dealing with perpetrators.
“What led us to seeing the urgency in setting up this coalition, holding the private sector to account, is that when you engage with some companies – they say they have no GBV cases: but when you look at the whistleblowing lines, there are many cases,” Mojapelo concluded.
“We say stop GBV before it even happens, from a prevention perspective and follow that up with clear enforcement which demonstrates that those found to be guilty will be acted upon in line with the conversations we are having here, which speaks to what we’re asking companies to actively do in terms of dealing with GBVH by adopting this framework.”
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