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- The University of Cape Town’s have launched a new application, Kwanele, a powerful new app tracking and countering sexual misconduct on its campuses.
- The survivor-centred app allows for GBV incidents to be reported without fear of persecution, shaming or other barriers that often deter survivors from acting.
- Among the platform’s essential features is the potential to collect valuable data and provide training on aspects of GBV such as consent, healthy relationships and bystander intervention.
Today’s era of digital innovation strengthens the fight against gender-based violence (GBV) with a more efficiently tailored response such as the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Kwanele, a powerful new app tracking and countering sexual misconduct on its campuses.
Introduced to a diverse audience at a recent event on lower campus, the survivor-centred app allows for GBV incidents to be reported without fear of persecution, shaming or other barriers that often deter survivors from acting.
“Many don’t understand what survivor-centred means,” explained Ann Isaac, the legal manager of UCT’s Special Tribunal that deals with formal disciplinary processes for sexual misconduct. “It doesn’t favour an outcome for the survivor, but helps take someone through the system where we minimise re-victimisation as much as we can.”
UCT, Isaac added, is the first higher-education institution to synergise a process dealing with sexual misconduct for both staff and students.
Kwanele CEO Leonora Tima said the app is specially designed to counteract stigma associated with reporting GBV by harnessing technology. It is not exclusively for women.
Among the platform’s essential features is the potential to collect valuable data and provide training on aspects of GBV such as consent, healthy relationships and bystander intervention. In this way the app contributes to GBV prevention and promotion of respect and accountability. Such data are key for tracking and addressing GBV trends, to understand the scope of the problem, identifying hotspots, and tailoring interventions, said Tima.
Kwanele, at this stage, focuses on university students and is geared towards a safer and more inclusive learning environment.
Obtaining consent for data use is another critical element of Kwanele’s approach. Users will have control over their information, sharing it only if they choose.
Prof Elelwani Ramugondo, UCT’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Transformation, Student Affairs and Social Responsiveness, said: “Kwanele didn’t just come up with an app without thinking carefully about whom it serves. Those it is intended for were consulted.”
Claremont police’s Vispol Commander Lt Col Marnus Fourie said any initiative to counter GBV is vital. “To track reported matters is definitely a good way to identify the ‘where’. It will enable UCT to identify high-risk campus areas and put measures in place to prevent future incidents with, say, better lighting, warning signs, more security and awareness campaigns in such identified areas.”
Fourie added: “GBV crime, like any crime, consists of three requirements: 1. Victim; 2. Perpetrator; 3. Opportunity. If one removes any one of them, a crime can not be committed. This can be done by empowering the victim through awareness and warning signs. One better forewarns the victim, to change the victim’s behaviour, by avoiding high-risk areas and less risky behaviour such as carrying expensive jewellery or drinking excessively (target hardening).”
Equally important, said Fourie, is the need to target the profile of known suspects with, for example, looking for multiple men who walk in high-risk areas ganging up on vulnerable women. “The opportunity is to identify the time and place, when and where the incidents occur and adding more lighting, security and warning signs in the affected areas.”
