Two kickass initiatives in South Africa to stop the cycle of violence and rape – Debi Stevens’ Action Breaks Silence and a pretty lethal fight club.
WITH THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN assuming epidemic proportions in South Africa in the recent past, and the hashtag #MenAreTrash trending voluminously, it’s heartening learning of small but significant social justice initiatives such as Action Breaks Silence working to bring awareness about the culture of rape and violence – and how it can be prevented.
We meet its founder Debi Stevens at a workshop at the Ikaneng Primary School in Soweto, an urban township in Johannesburg, where she bands together young boys and girls and teaches them just that.
“It started a while ago, but the root of the idea was sparked by rape,” says Stevens, herself a victim.
She was 11 years old when she was raped by her friend’s brother. She couldn’t understand what was happening to her, so she decided against telling her parents as she “thought they would divorce”.
Thankfully, she moved from Port Elizabeth to Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, far away from the perpetrator who lived in their neighbourhood.
She saw him often and he had been threatening to kill her.
“In high school, I thought of martial arts as self-defence. When a karate club came to my school, I ran to my parents to ask if I could start karate classes. Both my parents said no, because I was a girl.”
This story is from the August-September 2017 edition of Forbes Woman Africa.
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This story is from the August-September 2017 edition of Forbes Woman Africa.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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