Six staff members from Elphin Lodge and Ron Smith Care Centre have gained practical skills to help them respond to potentially dangerous situations after attending a Krav Maga self-defence workshop.
Terence Purves delivered the two-hour workshop after local companies PMI and Labex arranged it for their staff and sponsored six places for employees from the Elphin Lodge complex.
Rand Aid staff who attended were Elphin Lodge village manager Debbie Beech and deputy manager Hlumela Anderson, Ron Smith Care Centre social worker Nadine Radford, and Elphin Lodge complex accounts clerk Boniswa Sithole and front-office staff members Zodwa Mthombeni and Tanya Switala.
Debbie says the workshop was both practical and informative, with participants learning techniques to escape from various grab holds.
Terence focused on awareness and encouraged participants to be both passively aware of their surroundings and actively engaged with what is happening around them.
He outlined three basic rules for awareness:
- Trust what you know, not what you think you know.
- Know your normal and be aware if something is off.
- If it’s wrong, it’s wrong.
The workshop comes as concern over violence against women remains high nationally. Since July, at least 11 women’s bodies have been discovered in Ekurhuleni, with several victims showing signs of sexual violence. Police have made arrests in some of the cases, but investigators have not confirmed that the deaths are linked.
In a September 29 address to the nation, President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged the scale of the crisis, saying government’s response to GBV and femicide had ‘not been enough’. He announced a national review of unresolved murders, attempted murders, rapes and serious sexual offences involving women and children.
Ramaphosa also ordered municipalities to conduct women’s safety audits to identify hazards such as broken streetlights, overgrown public spaces, abandoned buildings and unsafe transport routes.
