“Powerless and afraid, I felt they let me down”: Reflections of a first-year student on gender-based violence at a university in South Africa

Abstract

abstract Despite existing national and institutional policies and interventions on gender-based violence (GBV), acts of GBV endure at universities in South Africa. Through narrative research inquiry, this focus piece reports on the experiences and perspectives of GBV of a first-year student at a university in South Africa. The findings presented reveal how she experienced feelings of vulnerability, silenced by ignorance, fear and powerlessness in a university residential space. She voices her disappointment regarding the reporting of the GBV incident, the disciplinary process, and the outcome thereof. Retrospectively, ‘Zinzi’ provides possible recommendations from the ground up. This paper explores the complicated policy conversation of a young women-led initiative to find real solutions to real problems for young women within risky institutional spaces characterised by acts of GBV. For young women like ‘Zinzi’, experiencing GBV first-hand as they entered the university space and voicing it can be recognised as a bold and valued contribution to fostering dialogue that can potentially lead to positive change. Only with young women-led policymaking can we expect institutions to give victims/survivors an intersectional safe space where women and men are unapologetic of who they are, fearless, and not angered by policies and practices meant to protect them – a space that transposes their powerlessness.