SCHOOL RELATED GENDER BASED VIOLENCE – TAKING ACTION Kakunta Kabika Mbuyu BETUZ (Basic Education Teachers Union of Zambia)
The first time I heard about School Related Gender Based Violence (SRGBV), I went into defensive mode, because I couldn’t agree with what was being talked about as something true. My view was that it targeted our male teachers. When our women’s coordinator briefed the staff at Basic Education Teachers’ Union of Zambia (BETUZ) about the concept of SRGBV and how it affected learner performance, I indicated to her that children in schools do not know about gender and that the concept did not exist in our schools in Zambia. My position as a trade unionist was that ensuring the dignity of our teacher members was priority and must be protected, and that anything that comes out to show that teachers were acting unprofessionally was not to be tolerated by the teachers’ representatives, their trade union. But due to the women’s coordinator’s engagement and insistence that schools needed to be safe and that a lot of unprofessional acts happened in schools, I gave the issue the benefit of the doubt. I indicated that we needed to understand the concept clearly and that we must make sure that the interest of our members are protected. I further indicated to the coordinator that we needed empirical evidence for us to be strategic in our engagement against SRGBV. But at the back of my mind was that we can’t bite the finger that feeds us and we needed to buy time. I recommended that we needed to conduct a study in order to understand the concept and if at all it existed in our schools, to know how to tackle it. 35
