Cape Town - Liquor traders were called on to take the lead in fighting gender-based violence in a dialogue facilitated by the Liquor Traders Association, NGO Act Now and attended by Police Minister Bheki Cele.
The Tavern Dialogues are designed to educate and equip men to drive positive change in their communities.
The dialogues were rolled out at 20 taverns in four provinces during Women’s Month, including the Western Cape, and on Thursday’s discussion took place at Rands in Khayelitsha.
National Liquor Traders convener Lucky Mtimane said through the dialogues they were trying to let men, and especially tavern owners, take a lead in the fight against gender-based violence.
“We feel that because we have the real estate where we can interact with our customers who are largely men. This is going to be an environment where we can make a difference in terms of creating awareness around issues of gender-based violence,” he said.
However, Mtimane said he was concerned that the majority of people who took part in the dialogue were women.
“Statistically, 95% of perpetrators of gender-based violence are men. So we are particularly concerned that men continue to shy away from these types of engagements.
“They continued not to come to these engagements, where we can find common solutions to fight the scourge of GBV in the country, which has now become a pandemic.
“We are going to reconsider why men are not part of these conversations but will keep on fighting to ensure that we get them to sit down and have these conversations, so that we can make a difference in our society,” he said.
Mtimane said there was a link between alcohol and GBVF and that in the statistics released by the police minister from January to March, out of 10 818 rapes, 1 260 were linked to alcohol.
“We want to play our part and we want to take ownership of what happens in our space and what creates safe spaces in retirement so that we’re able to fight GBVF,” he said.
Khayelitsha Development Forum chairperson said the Khayelitsha area was not easy to police at night as it had no access to roads and lighting.
“Khayelitsha has no readily available resources in place which make it possible to report gender-based violence. In an area where there is no house number there will always be an inability to tell the police where the incident occurred,” he said.
Jolene Henn from Distell Group said the partnership with police, manufacturers and traders to interrogate liquor as a driver of crime and GBVF would go a long way in promoting responsible sales and drinking.
Police Minister Bheki Cele said women were not commodities and men should understand this.