The power of fashion as a tool for social change is being realized in a tiny town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where suffering is being swapped with style and self-worth.



Deep in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), lies the town of Bukavu, home to a community of women survivors of violence.



Since it first opened its doors, this transformational leadership community called the City of Joy, has graduated 1,380 women leaders. Here, women are healed from their past trauma through therapy and life skills programming and provided with essential ingredients to move forward in life, supported by love and community.



The program welcomes 90 survivors of gender violence aged between 18 and 30 at a time.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://www.forbeswomanafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/City-of-Joy-Bukavu-DRC-CREDIT-MARC-SILVER-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-41534"/></figure>



Recently, specialist Dutch fabric maker, Vlisco, was asked to create a fashion collection to honor the women of the City of Joy and the surgeon who works with them, 2018’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr Denis Mukwege.



Five international designers worked with 15 City of Joy graduates to create a collection of empowering and personalized garments using new fabrics.



The fabrics consist of five traditionally printed super-wax patterns incorporating 100 different, vivid colors.



The collection was showcased at a gala event in front of a global audience in Kinshasa in November last year to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and all proceeds from the sale of the collection donated to the City of Joy.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://www.forbeswomanafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/City-of-Joy-graduate-models-an-outfit-created-by-Tolu-Coker-using-the-City-of-Joy-collection-fabric_3-Photo-credit-–-Vlisco-1024x684.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-41535"/></figure>



David Suddens, CEO of Vlisco, told FORBES WOMAN AFRICA that the five international designers, all African women, were keen to join the company’s efforts to help the women of the eastern Congo.



“They were immediately engaged even though they were not
initially aware of the City of Joy and the scale of the rape and brutality.
Once they had met the women, they formed a bond of love and respect.”



Suddens continues: “It was a real pleasure to work with the five designers; they not only created and made the garments in a very short period of time, they flew great distances to be with the women (one interrupted her family vacation in the United States to be in the DRC) and they made a huge impact on the women they designed for. The bond was palpable.”



The designers wrote to Suddens and Gabriela Sanchez, a Mexican Dutch designer and head of creative projects at Vlisco: “Thank you so much for changing not only our lives this year with this experience but also thank you for connecting us with these amazing women, with compelling stories and divine souls. You’re both a blessing to us.” The founder of City of Joy, Christine Schuler, told Suddens and Sanchez that many people visit the community, but “nobody has understood us like you have”.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“The beauty of the Congolese landscape is depicted; its river, its forests, its nature. From the dark roots of the forest, slowly flowers start to grow, butterflies appear, birds are in the sky and the sun is glimpsed behind the clouds.</blockquote>



Asked about the impact of the designs and this collaboration
on the community, Suddens says: “The designs are related to the lives and
suffering and hope and courage of the women in the City of Joy. You needed to
see their faces light up when they first saw the designs. They were overjoyed.”



The main stories expressed in the fabric designs are
fundamentally about the journey from pain to power. 



“The designs, at the bottom, are somber, twisted, even
menacing. But, as the eye moves upwards, there is gradually more light and the
images symbolize hope and respect and love,” Suddens explains. 



“The beauty of the Congolese landscape is depicted; its
river, its forests, its nature. From the dark roots of the forest, slowly
flowers start to grow, butterflies appear, birds are in the sky and the sun is
glimpsed behind the clouds.



“In one design sits a lion, dignified and rather sad, symbolizing Dr Mukwege. In another, sisterhood is portrayed, with intertwined threads joining ‘hands’ as they grow lighter but stronger. And two designs depict the beauty of the vagina, full of flowers against the dark background of the universe.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://www.forbeswomanafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Vlisco-designer-Gabriela-Sanchez-y-Sanchez-de-la-Barquera-stands-with-designers-Oritsegbubemi-Ogisi-Abiola-Adeniran-Olusola-Tolu-Coker-Aisha-Ayensu-Rebecca-Zoro-Photo-credit-–-Vlisco-1024x684.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-41538"/></figure>



FORBES WOMAN AFRICA also spoke to international designer
Aisha Ayensu, the founder and creative director of fashion brand Christie Brown
known as a player in the rise of contemporary African fashion since its
inception 11 years ago. 



“This project gave me first-hand insight into how fashion
can be used as a tool for social change but most importantly, meeting these
remarkable women, sharing in their joy and appreciating where they’ve come from
and their journey from pain to power has completely altered the way I view my
work and my purpose,” says Ayensu.



She recalls her experience in Kinshasa as magical. “It was
important that the gala event highlighted their power and recovery more than
the atrocities the women faced, but all the same, raising awareness of what may
still be going on and how we can help stop violence against women.”



“I had an experience with one of the ladies in Bukavu, when
she did her first fitting&#8230; The sheer joy and excitement on her face when she
saw her outfit and exclaimed in local language ‘for me?’ In disbelief. When she
put it on and saw a picture of herself, she started to cry tears of joy and
also started saying ‘is this me, today look at me, I am also somebody’. That
reaction was priceless. When fashion and design is deliberate and well thought
out, it has the power to elevate a woman in ways you can’t imagine.”



Added Suddens: “Never could they have imagined wearing their
own designs made into garments by African designers. To understand, you need to
see their faces. You need to see them literally dancing with joy.”&nbsp; 



-Jill De Villiers

City of Joy graduates walk the catwalk in Kinshasa to launch the City of Joy Collection (1)

Clothes Encounters In The Congo: How Fashion Can Be Used As A Tool For Social Change

From babyhood to adulthood, children are exposed to many forms of violence, no matter where they live.
Black adolescent boys in the United States are 19 times more likely to die than white boys of the same age, and face a similar risk of dying as their peers in the conflict zones of South Sudan. Latin America and the Caribbean have the highest child murder rates in the world. Around 300 million two-to-four-year-olds globally will experience physical punishment or verbal abuse by their parents or caretakers. And at least 15 million girls will have been sexually abused or raped by their 19th birthdays.
These are just some of the alarming findings of two wide-ranging global reports on violence against children. Both reports point to two major challenges: getting countries to gather better data on the various types of violence against children, which so often happens inside the home and/or by people known to the children, and taking steps to put an end to it.
There are still big gaps in knowledge, with many countries completely in the dark about the extent to which their child citizens are victims of violence. Even countries with better statistics have no idea how much corporal punishment happens in homes for example, or of the extent to which boys experience physical and sexual violence. All too often, violence against children is shrouded in secrecy.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2018/01/17/calling-sexual-harrassment/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Calling Out Sexual Harassment</a>
Know Violence in Childhood, a global initiative to end violence against children, released a detailed report informed by 44 research papers, thousands of articles, reports and other sources. Although the report presents a global picture, the authors state that “reliable data on inter-personal violence in childhood are difficult to obtain. This is partly because such violence takes place within relationships and is hidden by a strong culture of silence”. And many children and women are reluctant to report violence because of the stigma and fear of repercussions.
UNICEF’s report, A Familiar Face: Violence in the Lives of Children and Adolescents, builds on their seminal 2014 report on child violence statistics, Hidden in Plain Sight, which compiled data from 190 countries. Their new report contains updated statistics and analysis and notes that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which include targets to wipe out violence against children by 2030, offer the potential get better data on the crimes, ensure that monitoring takes place, that countries are held to account and most importantly, that they take proactive steps to stop it.
Although much more information is now available on violence against children than it was a few years ago, the gaps make it hard to compare countries with each other and for states to report and measure their progress on the SDGs.
Goal 5 (gender equality) and Goal 16 (peace) contain specific targets aimed at stopping violence against children but many of the other goals indirectly address some of the drivers of this violence too, including poverty, lack of education and poor health.
Nevertheless, if more progress is not made and if current trends continue, “close to two million children and adolescents could be killed by an act of violence by the year 2030”, warn the authors of the UNICEF report. And whether violence ends in death or not, the effects of pervasive and various forms of abuse throughout childhood have an insidious impact on society in general, says Know Violence Global Co-Chair A.K. Shiva Kumar.
“From severe physical punishment to sexual abuse to homicide, childhood violence damages individuals, families and communities in both rich countries and poor, with a cost in trillions of dollars a year.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/10/16/oprah-keeping-promise-made-mandela/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Oprah Keeping The Promise Made To Mandela</a>
Violence against children is closely tied up with violence against women. Children who see their mothers abused will more likely perpetrate violence themselves, warn the experts.
Childhood violence occurs in many forms – corporal punishment in the home and at school; physical, sexual and emotional abuse by adults or peers.
“Beyond the immediate physical damage it causes, exposure to violence can traumatize children, harm school performance, lead to depression and other illnesses, and increase the chances that young people will become the victims or perpetrators of violence in the future,” say the Know Violence in Childhood authors.
The UNICEF report cites an emerging body of research that shows the toxic effects of violence and other trauma on the developing brains of children in the first 1,000 days of their lives.
Violence not only threatens children’s physical safety but their cognitive and emotional development too. This is particularly disturbing given that data from 30 countries showed that nearly half of all one-to-two-year-olds were verbally abused or received corporal punishment.
Online violence is another emerging category of violence as more and more children around the world gain access to the Internet. Online bullying, harassment, sexual extortion and “grooming” for sex and child pornography are now the shadow side of increasing interconnectedness between children and their peers or with adult strangers, including those in far-flung parts of the globe.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2018/01/08/dark-side-social-media/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Dark Side Of Social Media</a>
Yet there is still a great deal of public ignorance about the many forms of violence that children experience. According to the UNICEF report, “Despite a growing awareness of the global nature of violence against children, the misconception that it is relatively rare persists. Media reporting typically focuses on extreme cases, such as death or rape. And while such tragedies, thankfully, are relatively uncommon, other acts of violence are not.” The authors also conclude that two out of three violent acts against children and adolescents are inter-personal rather than a result of broader conflict or civil unrest.
Although both reports make the point that violence happens across all economic strata, in rich and poor countries, low-income and high-income families, three regions in Africa nevertheless take the top three spots in tables compiled by Know Violence in Childhood for 2015: West and Central Africa, Eastern and Southern Africa, and Middle East and North Africa. These regions have the highest combined totals for the following categories: corporal punishment; bullying and physical fights; physical and sexual violence against girls; and child homicide. Although Latin America and the Caribbean have the highest rate of child murder, the other forms of violence are far lower in these regions. Industrialized countries have the lowest rates of all these categories combined. Another statistic shows that sexual violence against girls is worst in Eastern and Southern Africa, followed by West and Central Africa and Middle East and North Africa.
So what steps do experts recommend for taking steps to end the many forms of violence against children? As UNICEF says, “It will take individual and collective action to right this global wrong.” Measures must be taken at state, community and inter-personal levels, say the experts. Outlawing violence is a first step. So far, only 60 of 193 UN member states prohibit corporal punishment in the home. In schools, corporal punishment is either partly or fully illegal in roughly 130 countries.
Other steps include addressing the socio-economic conditions that perpetuate the violence such as unemployment, poverty, substance abuse and the like. And hopefully the SDGs will help build public awareness and pressure countries to come on board with clear efforts to prevent it.
Raising awareness in communities and among parents and caregivers on the rights of children and on the toxic effects of violence against them, as well as helping them find different strategies to manage children’s behavior, are among the recommendations the Know Violence in Childhood report makes.
Tackling hierarchical school systems that allow corporal punishment and other violence such as bullying is another. UNICEF is partnering with school programs to help teachers use strategies that promote better behavior rather than resort to punishment. The organization, a partner in the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children, has also developed a program called INSPIRE, which aims to spread awareness around programs that have been shown to work.
And, despite the downside of so many children being online, there is an upside too: technology can also protect children, with online awareness raising campaigns or mobile phone map applications, for example, that can help keep them safe.

Children At Risk From A Known Enemy

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 hard 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 can start karate classes. Both my parents said no, because I was a girl.”
<div id="attachment_33219" style="width: 280px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33219" class=" wp-image-33219" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Debi-Stevens-074-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="407" />Debi Stevens was herself a victim (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
Stevens speaks openly about her rape, but now sees herself as a survivor as she did go on to study martial arts. Today, she imparts this learning to young girls, and teaches young boys to respect them.
After the ordeal Stevens went through as a child, karate was her therapy. She was the only female in class, and hit the men so hard she was once asked to leave the club.
“One of the guys showed me his chest, it had my fist mark, I couldn’t believe it, I was so stunned.”
Stevens found healing in sport but soon, there was going to be another tragic turn of events. She was doing well as an athlete when she met an old friend in 1997. This friend, who had been a well-known model in South Africa in the late 1980s, was on drugs and offered them to Stevens.
Oblivious to the impact it would have on her life, she took it, not feeling any pain or emotion the first time. Six months later, she was a chronic addict to crack cocaine. Stevens was only 26 years old.
“People don’t actually realize the journey, sometimes it goes back to a really painful experience that those people are trying to escape. That’s what happened with me,” she says.
Stevens, full of energy, had found another form of escape from the horrific memories of her childhood rape.
Drugs masked her pain and emotion; she was soon selling her belongings to drug dealers.
In 1998, Stevens’ friend died in a car accident, only meters away from one of their drug dealers in Cape Town.
It was then in a fit of emotion that Stevens finally opened up to her mother for the first time about the rape – and the drugs. That was the beginning of her healing process.
“Fast forward the clock, I trained with self-defence instructors all over the world. It took me all this time to learn it so I could be able to pass it on. In my heart, it has always been how to help people that would never be able to pay for my services, that’s why the workshops,” she says.
Stevens has traveled to countries like India and organized the same program for girls and boys there. After each workshop, she sees positive changes in the children.
Thankfully, there are more such examples in Johannesburg of similar initiatives.
International sports brand Reebok partnered with Fight Club Gym for an initiative named Pretty Lethal offering free self-defence lessons for women.
“It was open to any woman who wanted to join. Women who are generally active, women of all races between the ages of 23 and 35 had registered online,” says Brian Jackson, Brand Activation Specialist for Reebok.
“The feedback has been excellent, we’ve managed to get exposure through various agencies and publications, it has been very positive because no one else has done this – an initiative to empower women.”
Phase two of Pretty Lethal will be launching in Cape Town during Women’s Month consisting of three classes of 50 women each. The fight must go on.

Fight Like A Girl

“I thought (the bullet) had gone through me. Nobody wanted to look. I wasn&#8217;t breathing properly because my lung had been punctured. And there were a couple of other wounds, rather embarrassingly, in my buttocks and in my hand,&#8221; recalls photojournalist Greg Marinovich.
This is one of the four times the 53-year-old has had to endure bullet wounds, three in his country, South Africa, and the last in Afghanistan in 1999.
Awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1991, Marinovich is one of four members of The Bang-Bang Club, famous for its brave coverage of a violent war that raged between 1990 and 1994 during South Africa’s transition from apartheid. As many journalists stayed away from the violence that broke out between the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party, only these four photojournalists braved the worst and alerted the world of the gruesome rivalry between political parties.
Interestingly, Marinovich only fell in love with the camera in his early adulthood.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4535" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DAR3055-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
“Growing up, I never had photographer or journalist role models, I had no ambition to do this work. Now, though, I look up to many of my colleagues, especially Gilles Peress, who is a great photographer and a great thinker,” says Marinovich.
The, now, US-based photojournalist co-authored the book The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War, together with the only other surviving member of the club, João Silva. Fellow Pulitzer Prize winner, Kevin Carter, took his own life; Ken Oosterbroek died from a stray bullet in street fighting in Johannesburg, East Rand.
After being dissatisfied with what their images alone told about the war, Marinovich and Silva decided to write a fuller account, what he describes as being deeper than the superficiality of conflict images. Marinovich is still a bit dissatisfied with the legacy The Bang-Bang Club has left.
“It seems to have left a legacy contrary to what we aimed to achieve. It seems that so many young photographers see the business as being glamorous and attractive, whereas we hate the glamorization of photojournalists, nor is it heroic,” says Marinovich.
On his own legacy, Marinovich is prouder.
“Perhaps I have left a passion of truth telling of people’s stories no matter how difficult that is. Of never faking stuff,” says Marinovich.
Testimony to this would be the Marikana investigations where Marinovich helped reveal that South African police had executed miners in a hidden area after the televised shooting, which resulted in the death of 34 mineworkers at the hands of the police in 2012.
Although Marinovich says that only a lotto ticket would make him stop being a photojournalist any time soon, he has ceased from doing conflict journalism, which cost his friend, Silva, both his legs when he stood on a landmine in Afghanistan.
“We are as close as ever, but I was horrified by the incident. He has suffered and still suffers greatly from the wounds,” says Marinovich.
Marinovich reckons the future of photojournalism in Africa is promising, mentioning: some “great” ones in Zanele Muholi; Andrew Esiebo; Tsepo Gumbi; and Boniface Mwangi.
“It’s very tough to make a living for the majority, but if you are consistently excellent you will succeed. Keep telling stories close to your hea

The bloody trail To The Truth

The hard boiled trade unionist sat and wept before journalists as he told of his last attempt to save some of the 44 lives—including two police officers, lost in a violent and bloody week at one of South Africa’s biggest and most troubled platinum mines.
For a week in August more than 3,000 workers protested on top of Wonderkop Hill around two kilometers from the gates of Marikana Mine, in Rustenburg 122km north west of Johannesburg. Almost the entire workforce of 30,000 people downed tools in support of more pay for the rock drillers, who carry out the hardest and most dangerous work for the least pay.
The president of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), Joseph Mathunjwa, recalled the last few minutes before angry strikers rushed the police.
“Please leave this place; they are going to kill you… I kneeled there, I tried to plead with them… They said to me they think it’s safe to be on the mountain. ‘If we have to be killed let the police come and kill us… We want money that can keep our families going’ [they said],” Mathunjwa says.
Mineworkers in North West’s Lonmin Platinum mine began striking on August 10 for salary increases from an estimated R4,500 ($540) to R12,500 ($1,500). Many have blamed rivalry between AMCU and the biggest trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), for the tension that led to the fatal shooting.
AMCU denies this. It says the union was asked to intervene on August 13 and was merely doing its job.
“I never thought that the history of the Sharpeville massacre would happen in 2012, in a democratic society,” said Mathunjwa.
AMCU voiced their frustrations with their organization being wrongfully charged as orchestrating the massacre. Mathunjwa argued that they were a recognized union in some sections at Lonmin and had a membership of 7,000.
“Why involve violence now?”
Eddie Majadibodu, the head of bargaining for the NUM, saw the shootings and how police dispersed strikers in the aftermath on the following day to prevent more violence.
“The NUM wants a full public inquiry to determine exactly what happened,” he says.
It is one of the few issues upon which both unions agree.
The ministry of police spokesperson, Zweli Mnisi, says the matter has been a brewing labor issue, employee versus employer. The police were called in to retain order as the constitution does not call for barbaric behavior, he said. Two police officers were killed on the first day that violence struck, he says that the workers were in possession of illegal arms are and dared the cops saying: “You dare us, we won’t move. If you want war, we’ll give you war.”
“From our side it’s not the duty of the police to be labor brokers,” he says.
Police confirmed that 44 people had died on the night of August 16 when police first used water cannon and then bullets to stop a rushing crowd.
“The [Independent Police Investigative Directorate] IPID, who police the police, are onsite to determine who fired the first shot,” he says.
Lonmin chairman, Roger Phillimore, said: “We are treating the developments around police operations this afternoon [August 17] with the utmost seriousness. The South African Police Service (SAPS) have been in charge of public order and safety on the ground since the violence between competing labor factions erupted over the weekend, claiming the lives of eight of our employees and two police officers. It goes without saying that we deeply regret the further loss of life in what is clearly a public order rather than labor relations associated matter.”
Workers at Marikana risked dismissal by ignoring an ultimatum from Lonmin, the world’s third largest platinum producer, to return to work by August 17. President Jacob Zuma cut short a regional SADC conference, held in Maputo, Mozambique, to return home so he could visit Marikana.
As the sun went down on the day after the killings a group of women gathered around Wonderkop Hill and wept for their lost men.
“You have stolen our husbands, you have stolen our brothers,” shouted one distraught woman at police.
Only an inquiry will tell us how this happened.

Tag: Violence

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Clothes Encounters In The Congo: How Fashion Can Be Used As A Tool For Social Change

Children At Risk From A Known Enemy

Fight Like A Girl

The bloody trail To The Truth

A Week Of Bloody Shame