25 November 2009

Stamp Out Gender Violence Exhibition

People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) is partnering with the South African Post Offices to run an innovative and informative awareness campaign for postal workers for 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children, held annually from 25 November - 10 December.

The project has two components to it - the first component was encouraging women postal workers to write anonymous letters to those who abused them. The letters serve both as catharsis and will also form part of the advocacy materials used in the exhibition.

The second component, an exhibition entitled "Stamp out Violence", will be launched at the National Post Office in Pretoria on Wednesday 25 November 2009 and will run for the duration of the 16 Days of Activism at the Post Office headquarters in Pretoria and at Witspos mail-sorting centre in Johannesburg. This exhibition is a multimedia experience focusing on:

  • Domestic violence, where the exhibition space is a bedroom with facts and figures on domestic violence
  • Rape, where the exhibition consists of life-size cutouts so that visitors can walk among the cutout figures
  • Sexual harassment, where the visitor is surrounded by a recording of a sexual harassment survivor telling her story.

The exhibition also features the history of the struggle for women's rights in the form of protest art (including posters supplied by SAHA from the SAHA Poster Collection (AL2446), interviews with Post Office women on the progress made internally over the past 30 years, and it informs victims/ survivor what they can do when confronted with abuse. Materials from this exhibition will be archived at SAHA.