07 Dec 2020

Balete Paramount Chief, Kgosi Mosadi Seboko says gender equality does not mean that women and men have to become the same, but that their rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend whether they are born male or female,

Speaking at a Gender Based Violence walk, Kgosi Mosadi said GBV was a significant barrier to achievement of every developmental outcome. She said boys and girls were at equal risk of physical and emotional abuse and neglect and were at greater risk of sexual abuse, adding that the findings from the 2018 Violence Against Children survey indicated that physical violence was the most form of violence against children.

“An average of 28.4 per cent and 43 per cent of female and male children in Botswana, respectively experience physical violence before the age of 18 years,” she said, the survey also revealed that prevalence of sexual violence prior to age 18 was 9.3 per cent for females and 5.5 per cent for males.

She said there had been numerous cases in Botswana where violence between intimate partners ended with murder of one of them, at times, followed by the death of the abuser, adding that such deaths usually arose from jealousy or revenge or refusal on part of the abuser to accept the end of a relationship.

She noted that the findings of a dialogue that was conducted at Gamalete in November 2020 revealed that causes of GBV included lack of respect and trust, dishonesty in relationships, lack of communication, secrecy, jealousy, drug and alcohol abuse, multiple concurrent partners, cheating and cohabitation, love of money by some women, sugar daddies and lack of counselling.

On the other hand, Kgosi Seboko said some strategies that could be employed included continuous education on GBV, proper use of technology such as facebook, involvement of youth in kgotla meetings, encouraging faithfulness in marriage, proper raising of children, promoting communication, visit counselling centres, application of emotional intelligence technique by men.

In relation to children, she said strategy to combat defilement and rape was providing education to children on defilement and rape at the same time encouraging them to report such issues.

Assistant minister of youth empowerment, sport and culture development, Mr Buti Billy said by participating in such event it showed that people were patriotic and he called on parents to correct or teach love to their children if cases of GBV are to go down.

Dr Kgosidialwa Mompati of Riverside Hospital urged government and dikgosi to come up with stringent laws to end up GBV. Ends