Looting has fuelled gender-based violence

Gloria de Gee, founder of the Umgeni Community Empowerment Centre, which is active against gender-based violence and human trafficking, is asking for cash and old oil ‒ vegetable and engine ‒ to help fund her charity. Picture: Duncan Guy.

Gloria de Gee, founder of the Umgeni Community Empowerment Centre, which is active against gender-based violence and human trafficking, is asking for cash and old oil ‒ vegetable and engine ‒ to help fund her charity. Picture: Duncan Guy.

Published Sep 4, 2021

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“Your clean money or your dirty oil.”

That’s the plea from a Durban charity as it feels the after-effects of the recent looting that has added to the woes of some of the city’s most vulnerable people.

Gloria de Gee, founder of the Umgeni Community Empowerment Centre, said the charity which fights gender based violence (GBV) and human trafficking, was hard-hit by the recent unrest.

She said businesses in Springfield and the Workshop which used to support her organisation had been looted and damaged.

“That amounted to about R15 000 a month,” she told the Independent on Saturday.

Now, she is battling to pay the centre’s rent at its office near the bay shore and safe houses at undisclosed sites. Since the looting, the centre has been feeding more people through generous food donations. But food alone won’t pay the bills.

The centre is relying more and more on Oasis Recycling, an enterprise De Gee started to raise funds. It involves collecting used vegetable oil and used engine oil for recycling.

“We are appealing to hotels and to garages,” De Gee said.

The money is needed to cover costs such as transport for victims of GBV who are too terrified to travel out of their areas using public transport.

Volunteer project manager Jennifer Fisher who says she “drives on reserve using my own car”, cited an example of the kind of calls they receive.

“We had a case of a husband who had looted and brought stuff home. His wife said she didn’t want that stuff in her house. He beat her up for that. He intended to use their house as a place to sell the looted goods.”

Frustration at unemployment, exacerbated by the riots, had led to more gender-based violence, said Fisher.

De Gee added that human trafficking, often targeting desperate teens with lies that lured them into lives of rape, prostitution and threats against family members if they were disobedient, had become rife.

“And it’s happening online.”

She added that this included the “blesser-blessee“ phenomenon, which sees older, rich men entice younger and more vulnerable women with money and expensive gifts in exchange for sexual favours.

“In most cases, these older men are married,” De Gee said.

“If the blesser coerces the blessee to exchange sexual favours with other men for reward by means of threats, force, abuse of power and such like, this may amount to human trafficking.“

De Gee started UCEC through her work offering ministry to sex workers and soup kitchens to serve needy people food in the Kenville and Umgeni Road areas.

“We are cleaning the city. We have been working all the way through Covid as an essential service. Now we need business to come and help,” said De Gee.

For further information, visit: www.ucec.org.za

The Independent on Saturday

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