GBV

Gun violence within abusive relationships is a subject that is all too familiar for anti-violence organisations and activists but seldom gets the public attention that it deserves. In February this year, HBF with its partners, Gun Free SA, MOSAIC & the National Shelter Movement of SA launched a new campaign that aims to strengthen the rights and safety of victims from gun-related domestic violence.

GBV shelters provide more than just a bed to sleep in; for many, shelters are a haven when the next step is death.  This 16 Days of Activism, the Western Cape Women's Shelter Movement, the provincial body of HBF partner the National Shelter Movement, highlight the expanded role of shelters in responding to and disrupting violence against women.

Mandela Month is in full swing, but for the National Shelter Movement of South Africa (NSM) and other non-profit organisations working in the social care services sector, there is very little Ubuntu coming from the government. This Mandela Day, the NSM calls on South Africans to DONATE just R67 to support 95 GBV shelters around the country.

An open letter to the President of South Africa by our partner, Her Rights Initiative, calling for justice and redress for the forced and coerced sterilisation of 85 HIV positive women in South Africa's public hospitals.

The work of our partners Ubuntu Women and Sisterhood Movement was recently featured in Feminist Africa's latest journal,  African Women's Lives in the Time of a Pandemic. Here they document their tireless work addressing the many challenges that the pandemic presented in the lives of rural communities of the Western Cape. We are proud to have supported some of this work.

Freedom is not absolute in South Africa and never will be. In fact, the notion of absolute freedom, while it sounds good to say, is an absurd fallacy.

On 2 December 2021, the Heinrich Böll Foundation launched its second research brief associated to its “Care and Support in a Time of Epidemic" research project. The project is dedicated to better understanding how COVID-19, and the subsequent implementation of lockdown in South Africa on 27 March 2020 has impacted on domestic violence in the country.