Chronicle Editor
Robin Muchetu, Features writer
GENDER-Based Violence (GBV) is a cancer all societies are fighting to find a panacea for, with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) highlighting that one in three women experience a form of GBV in Zimbabwe in their lifetime.
Various organisations have come on board to assist Government efforts to end the scourge and have been making significant progress. However, not many centres were offering holistic services to people who needed services in Bulawayo.
Experts are on record saying reporting of GBV in Zimbabwe as a whole has been met with many hurdles as there are too many service providers that an abused person has to go through before they are assisted to report their cases.
The first hurdle is usually leaving the home where the abuser is also staying. It takes a lot of courage for the women to leave unnoticed to go and report cases to the police. Sometimes the women said they were scared to leave the home in fear of being intercepted by their abusers so they sometimes take time to report cases.
Another hurdle mentioned by the Victim Friendly Unit of the police is announcing cases of Sexual Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) abuse to their families as this is often met with complications.
“You find a woman or girl is raped by an uncle and she tells her parent or guardian, that guardian they decides to call for a family meeting with close relatives maybe a week later, after digesting the news.
Then they have lengthy discussions that may stretch for weeks as the case will still be handled in-house. In our case, we have a religious society, we find cases jumping from the family level and taken to the church where the pastor or other senior members may be appraised and then they too try and solve the matter.
This is all before the case even reaches the police station, this can take time and the results are disastrous,” said a police source from the VFU.
Cases of rape are ordinarily supposed to be reported as soon as they occur or at least before 72 hours lapse so that police can collect any evidence in the form of any semen, or injuries, or clothing and also to ensure timeous administration of Post
Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP), a drug that is used to prevent HIV infection in the event of exposure.
Medical officers also administer a drug to prevent any pregnancy and to treat possible Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). All these need to be performed within 72 hours of any SGBV attack. With how cases are handled at the household level, the police say it will be a long time before cases are reported at all in the country.
With such many unfortunate occurrences and reports being made of GBV against women, the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprise Development constructed six One-Stop Centres in various provinces with one stationed at Mpilo Central Hospital to ensure there is timeous reportage and access to treatment for victims of GBV.
The centres come equipped with various vital services that ensure women and girls access all necessary services in one place as opposed to visiting four or five different service providers found in different places. These structures have facilities like medical doctors, police officers, counselling services, and legal services so that a man or woman who has suffered GBV can be assisted under one roof.
The Mpilo Hospital One-Stop Centre is also equipped with a play centre for children in case mothers in distress can come with their children. While the ministry said these shelters were a good move they were not a lasting solution to the challenge at hand. They said centres should not become the norm urging people to live together amicably and solve the problems they have without harming each other.
They added that the One-Stop Centres are a necessity and a lot of women are being victimised and they do not know where to go to report cases. They highlighted that there are non-governmental organisations that deal with these issues but are overburdened, so as a ministry that is responsible for families and gender issues, they came as an urgent need to alleviate the problem.
Mpilo Hospital was chosen to house the centre because the hospital is surrounded by high-density suburbs where most of these cases of GBV are being reported. Mrs Matilda Singende director in the Ministry of Women Affairs Community, Small and Medium Enterprise Development said the Mpilo One-Stop Centre will be open by March.
“Most of the construction work has been done, the outstanding work is the tiling and the paving of the building. We are hoping that by the end of February, the building will be complete and we will open it to the public around March so it can be used.
We will be offering four main services to GBV survivors mainly psychosocial support, legal, police, and health services. It will offer other services that are non-health that survivors may need when they visit the centre for any services that they may have,” said Mrs Singende.
The year 2023 was one of the worst for Zimbabwe as a whole with dreadful stories about violence against women and girls being reported in the media. Economic inequalities have also fuelled a large proportion of GBV in Zimbabwe and the world over as women and girls are disproportionately affected than their male counterparts.
Several calls have been made encouraging the Government and all its stakeholders to send a clear message to would-be perpetrators that society frowns at such deplorable behaviour.
The Church has been labelled as an agent of change in the fight against GBV in the country with calls to make sure that awareness to their congregants takes centre stage as frequently as possible. Bulawayo is home to The Haven, a centre for abused women from around the city who seek refuge after having experienced some form of GBV.
The Haven is located in Hillside suburb where women and girls affected by GBV can find refuge together with their children as they re-organise their lives and make a fresh start. It is run by Mrs Thobelike Khumalo who after hearing callous encounters from hospitals, police stations, the courts and schools from abused women, teamed up with a group of professional women in Bulawayo and pulled resources together and opened a home for survivors.
This is one of the very few places that take abused women and offer them shelter, counselling and an opportunity to get their lives back on track. It is hoped that places like the Mpilo One-Stop Centre, once opened, will augment services provided by The Haven and take in more women who will have survived abuse ordeals.
@NyembeziMu
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