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The Eastern Cape Department of Social Development has released alarming statistics on gender-based violence in the province.
Department spokesperson, Gcobani Maswana, says there's been a three-fold increase in the number of cases over the past few years.
He says the Department will be hosting an all-important conference in East London on 30-31 August 2012, ICC Conference Centre, to address the scourge of gender-based violence which has jumped from just over 4 000 cases in the 2009/2010 financial year to more than 12 000 in the 2011/2012 period.
"One of the social problems that face South Africa is the challenge of crime and violence. This challenge of crime was identified as a priority area of development as early as 1996, with the development and implementation of the National Crime Prevention strategy (NCPS)," Maswana said.
"This National Crime Prevention Strategy emphasised a restorative approach to crime prevention and identified the provision of services to victims of crime and violence as a critical element for mitigating the cycle of crime and violence. The Victim Empowerment Programme (VEP) was launched in 1998 to develop and implement policies, programmes and services for victims of crime and violence."
"Gender based violence (GBV) is a social problem with complex social and legal consequences and it is a focus area of the Victim Empowerment Programme of the South African Government led by the Department of Social Development."
"The scourge of gender based violence in the Eastern Cape has led to the Department calling upon all stakeholders to a Gender Based Violence Conference to come up with an integrated strategy to eradicate this scourge," he added.
Statistics for the past three (3) years indicate a steady increase:
"4026 victims of crime and violence in 2009/10
"8 616 victims of crime and violence in 2010/11
"12 451 victims of crime and violence in 2011/12
The Eastern Cape Department of Social Development says the latest study has revealed that 54.57% of all rape victims in the Eastern Cape were children aged between 0- 18 years, 30.90% of these child victims were in the age group 0 to 9 years: whilst 69.10% of child victims were in the age group 10 to 18 years.
"During the same study, the majority of incidents of child rapes occurred during week-ends (60.36%) between 12H00 and 21H00 (53.39%) and 53 children fell victim to gang related rapes consisting of between 2 -6 offenders per rape incident."
