Gender-based violence (GBV) remains a pressing issue in educational institutions worldwide, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) is no exception. 

UKZN Risk Management Services GBV investigator Zinhle Ngcobo highlights the complexities of this issue, discussing the university’s efforts to provide support for victims while navigating the challenges posed by existing systems.

Ngcobo was speaking during the launch of the Campus Community Safety Forum at UKZN on Tuesday. 

She said the university experiences incidents of GBV in different forms including sexual, physical, psychological, economic and digital. 

Ngcobo said UKZN has faced numerous challenges in recent years. 

“One thing that we really want to avoid in everything that we do is secondary victimisation, and we find that it happens so much because we haven’t really built the necessary relationship with SAPS,” Ngcobo said.

She said SAPS would take a statement from the victim, and the university would also want to take one. That makes the victim repeat their ordeal. 

“That’s one of our biggest challenges, where we hope that out of this we’d be able to come up with a solution where we only need to take one statement from the victim, and we’re not making them keep on having to repeat the story,” Ngcobo said. 

Some police stations, like Alexandra in Pietermaritzburg, share the views of UKZN, with their officers visiting the campus to take victim statements and leaving a copy for the university.

Ngcobo said they have incidents where students are not taken to victim-friendly rooms and are interviewed in the charge office. 

“It’s very traumatic for our victims, and there have been times when we’ve had to step in and unfortunately, it seems like we are unfriendly and don’t want to cooperate, but we have to protect our students at all costs,” Ngcobo said. 

She said at other times, especially in the Durban metropolitan area, they have to wait for the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Units (FCS) detectives. 

“We then also have issues with our Thuthuzela Centres and our Crisis Care Centres, and that’s because their operating procedures are very different. It depends on which one you go to,” Ngcobo said. 

RK Khan Hospital is preferred due to on-site SAPS and social workers, unlike Addington Hospital, where a case number and J88 are required from a police station before going to the hospital.

“It becomes a process, again, secondary victimisation, because that student now has to keep on telling that story over and over again. It’s not ideal, and I hope that we get to a stage where we are operating the same way, and we understand the way each different entity operates,” Ngcobo said.

She also said mandatory reporting under the Sexual Offences and Related Matters Act is a challenge when victims, mostly students under 25, do not wish to open a case. The dilemma is how to fulfil reporting obligations without losing student trust and aA balancing mechanism is needed, she said.

“The greatest solution to all of these problems is that we have to have to build greater relationships, and for us, especially with the FCS,” Ngcobo said. 

SAPS social crime prevention head Major-General Thokozani Mathonsi said that in terms of procedure, victims of sexual offences or any sensitive matter are supposed to be taken through to a victim-friendly service, where the detectives and social workers will be called in to ensure that the victim is interviewed and treated properly. 

“Part of this process is to address some of those issues, because we believe that if we establish a joint structure where these challenges are discussed, then we’ll be able to prevent those things from happening in the future,” Mathonsi said. 

thobeka.ngema@inl.co.za

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