PAARL, August (ANA) - President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday called for an end to what he termed a violent war on women in South Africa and said a summit would be held at the end of the month to mull ways to stop it.
"In towns small and large, in cities, in homes, in schools, in colleges, in universities, in parks and open spaces, a war is being waged in South Africa on their right to security and equality. It is an affront to our common humanity," Ramaphosa told a Women's Day rally in Paarl in the Western Cape.
"We must get it into our heads that we don't own women, nor do we own their bodies, and we should not seek to dominate them."
He said the rampant emotional and physical abuse of women showed that government and society as a whole had failed to "live up to the promise of 1994" of a non-sexist, non-violent post-apartheid state.
"The assault on the dignity and integrity of women has reached unprecedented levels... there is a real danger that because violence against women has become so pervasive that as a society we have gradually become unmoved and stopped seeing it as an abhoration," the president said.
Ramaphosa called on the gathering, which had been addressed by a number of members of the government, to observe a moment of silence for women who have been assaulted, raped and killed in numbers he compared badly to international average incidences of gender-based violence.
"We will stop this scourge of the killing of women, of the rape of women, of the violence perpetrated against the women of our country.
"We commit ourselves, as we head to the national gender summit, we will want to do good by the women of our country, but for now, as men, we hang our heads in shame," he said.
The national summit will be held on August 31.
- African News Agency (ANA)
