Water Wheel September/October 2018

Abstract

No woman, no cry R*E*S*P*E*C*T demanded the queen of soul, Aretha Franklin, in what became an anthem for the struggle for gender equality in the 1970s and 1980s. There was a rising optimism, globally, that perhaps finally we were gaining momentum toward gender equality. The year 1979 heralded the United Nations CEDAW (Convention of the Elimination of All form of Discrimination Against Women) and sixteen years later saw the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action at the Fourth World Conference on Women. For a country like South Africa, then a one-year-old democracy having just thrown off the shackles of racism and sexism that defined the patriarchal Apartheid State, this was a historical point of inflection for the establishment of real equality in South Africa and the world. And yet in 2018, Statistics South Africa’s Crime against women in South Africa report shows a decline in transgressions against women compared with historical levels, but still unacceptably high levels in the major categories.

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