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Churches march against violence

19/08/2013 06:49:00 BY SIBUSISO ZWANE

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CROYNDON – Swaziland Young Women Network (SYWON) Public Relations Officer (PR0) Hleli Luhlanga is dreaming of being appointed Minister of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs in the future.

Luhlanga revealed her dream during the Croydon interdenominations prayer service that was held at Croydon Sports Ground on Saturday.
The prayer was hosted by church groups from the area and it was aimed at praying for the alarming number of blood shedding incidents that have happened since the beginning of the year.

SYWON is an organisation that deals with issues concerning the rights of young women either married or single. The organisation also deals with issues of sexual abuse including gender based violence and rape among others. Luhlanga said they heard about the prayer and they could not be left out because it also touched a lot on subjects they were focusing on.

Surprised

“Do not be surprised in the future when you hear that I have been appointed Minister of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs because I have a strong desire for issues concerning the youth. I want to advocate for the rights of young women in the country so that the cases of sexual abuse among other cases that usually affects them can decrease,” Luhlanga said. She said she had spotted a number of gaps especially the issue of empowering the youth of the country in order to achieve His Majesty’s wish for the country to attain First World status by 2022.

“There are so many fact findings that point fingers to young women’s vulnerability, like the Swaziland Demographic Health Survey of 2007 and a study by UNICEF on young women and girls in 2008.
“However, we are not seeing some programmes because when doing a research you need to move and respond to the gaps. So I feel it somehow betrays the young people,” she said.
She said she believed that when God created Adam and Eve He wanted them to live with equality, meaning he did not create them to ill-treat each other by either assaulting or abusing the other in whatever possible way.

The PRO said she believes that God wanted every human being to have access to equal opportunities including education, poverty alleviation, access to health, sexual and reproductive health rights. She said another important issue was that there were programmes reversing poverty incidences which currently have a face of women.

“I believe that God created gender for the purpose that he wanted human beings to give birth to others not to use the power of the gender over the other, He wanted gender equality. I also believe that God gave mouths to women so that they could be able to make their own decisions instead of being controlled by men,” Luhlanga said.

She said even though most women in the country live under the poverty line that could drive them to have unprotected sex among other things, as SYWON, they were there to deal with that and that is what she wants to focus on in the future.

The prayer was graced by former Mkhiweni Member of Parliament and Minister of Tinkhundla Administration and Development Rodgers Mamba who said he was there was a community member not representing government.