Deputy Speaker, the NFP notes and welcomes the report of the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with disabilities tabled here today.
But allow me to congratulate Magistrate Goolam Bawa today for authorizing the naming of the suspect in the murder of the University of Cape Town, UCT, student, Uyinene, who was murdered recently and the suspect is Luyanda Botha. And I think some time today the magistrate has
authorized that he can actually be named; they were trying to protect that before.
Now, what we've noticed here is that while this department has spent 94,7% of its budget, it failed to achieve 68% of its targets.
The question that we ask is: Would the President, in this announcement that he made recently that over R1 billion and now I think it's going to about R1,6 billion that is going to be set aside to deal with issues of gender- based violence and things ... and if this is how this particular department, and I'm not saying the entire resources is going to this department, but if this is how this department performs and a great percentage of those funds are going to go to this department, then really I don't believe that they are going to achieve much in protecting women, youth and children.
The issue ... I've had a call yesterday of a girl that was assaulted, severely assaulted because she had in fact borrowed money from a loan shark, her stuff was taken away, she went through to the police and the police said
to her "NO, you must go through to the clinic, the day hospital and get a report"; my understanding was she should have been sent to a district surgeon. But again what does it show? It shows that theirs is no coordination between the justice between the police; there is no professionalism at this level to deal with some of the challenges that we have.
However, the NFP will support any initiative in trying to address the challenges that our women and youth in South Africa face. Thank you. [Applause.]