Legal practitioner, Chriscy Blouws
In the August monthly feature, we speak to legal practitioner Chriscy Blouws of the Women’s Legal Centre (WLC). Ms Blouws was born in the Western Cape, and originally comes from Elsies River on the Cape Flats. She describes herself as a gender activist, and human rights legal practitioner. She obtained her LLB degree from the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town.
After completing her articles at the Legal Resources Centre, Ms Blouws moved to the Northern Cape to head the Lawyers for Human Rights law clinic, focusing on land and housing, particularly tenure security for farmworkers and farm dwellers. ‘I moved back to Cape Town to focus on urban land issues and spatial justice at Ndifuna Ukwazi for two years before joining the Women’s Legal Centre in November 2018,’ said Ms Blouws.
She pointed out that she is an alumnus of the Bertha Foundation and alumnus and member of the DAWN network (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era). She currently serves as the Deputy Chairperson on the Board for the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children. ‘Central to my being, I am a daughter, partner, mother, and aunt and I strive to express myself through the same feminist ethos of empathy, care and justice in both my professional and personal capacities,’ Ms Blouws added.
Kgomotso Ramotsho (KR): Why did you choose to study law?
Chriscy Blouws (CB): Growing up in an underprivileged and marginalised community exposed me to social ills, inspiring me to strive for social justice and use the law as a tool to achieve social justice and substantive equality for women. I believe that my personal background and experience uniquely places me in a position of having the lived reality of the many social ills, which exist in poor and disadvantaged communities in which poverty, crime and violence continue to be rife. I believe that this lived reality contributes to my skills as a human rights lawyer, activist and feminist practitioner in the fight to advance our laws for a more substantively equal, gender and racially transformed society.
KR: How do you perceive the importance of women’s rights in shaping a just and equitable society, and what specific aspects of these rights resonate most with you?
CB: Women bear the brunt of all issues in our society therefore women’s rights are basic human rights and, for as long as we ignore their lived realities and unique struggles, we are failing society at large.
I have worked in the public interest and human rights sector, and specifically on the enforcement of women’s rights, for over ten years and while South Africa receives global recognition for its progressive Constitution, the lived reality for many, particularly black women in South Africa, remains far from the hope that the Constitution has of an improved quality of life that is dignified.
Women are not a homogenous group, and when they experience discrimination and violence, they experience it at multiple levels both personally and systemically, often at the hands of state institutions designed to protect them. Women deserve to have adequate access to basic resources, social security and health services. They deserve the right to live free from violence and work in spaces which are just and favourable. Our work seeks to dismantle patriarchal systems of oppression to ensure that women live a truly free and dignified life.
KR: Why did you choose to work at an NGO?
CB: Since my time as a student at the University of the Western Cape, I have been actively involved in social justice initiatives. I took a leadership role in the community-based initiative called Street Law during my tenure as a student. Street Law sought to extend clinical legal education to students at schools in marginalised communities. This fuelled my passion for human rights work, in particular, the ability to use the law as a tool to advance social justice through not only litigation, but through a multipronged approach which encompasses advocacy, education and training, as well as media and communications. I knew that I would get this type of exposure from a human rights law firm, and this motivated me to apply to one of the oldest and biggest human rights law firms in South Africa.
I completed my articles at the Legal Resources Centre in Cape Town, where, as a legal clerk, I gained exposure to various thematic areas including the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, gender equality, women’s rights to be free from violence, and the right to adequate land, housing, and tenure security. As a young clerk I worked on and had exposure to impact litigation and a commission of inquiries which sought to investigate the resources as allocated to the South African Police Service and stations based in marginalised communities in the Western Cape. This work solidified my vision of a just and transformed society in which all human rights are respected and protected, and I have not looked back since.
KR: What is your role at the Women’s Legal Centre?
CB: I am employed at the Women’s Legal Centre as an attorney and the candidate attorney coordinator. I work across various thematic areas relating to women’s rights to access land, housing and tenure security, women’s rights to favourable and just working conditions with a specific focus on the lived reality of marginalised workers who work in precarious conditions such as domestic workers, farm workers and sex workers. My work focuses on substantive equality and creating feminist jurisprudence, which recognises women’s rights to be safe in their workplace and in society. In addition, I work on women’s rights to be free from violence, in particular, the right of women to publicly name their perpetrators, and this area of work seeks to recognise the systemic failures, lived reality and South African context which contributes to why women choose to speak publicly and name their perpetrators. Overall, I recognise how women experience compounded discrimination based on their intersecting identities and acknowledge how women who live and work in poverty struggle to access adequate and essential services such as adequate health services.
I have worked on various cases relating to women’s rights while at the WLC and some notable judgments of cases which I have litigated include, Mahlangu and Another v Minister of Labour and Others (Commission for Gender Equality and Another as amici curiae) 2021 (1) BCLR 1 (CC); [2021] 2 BLLR 123 (CC); (2021) 42 ILJ 269 (CC); 2021 (2) SA 54 (CC); and S v P 2022 (2) SACR 81 (WCC).
KR: One of the key areas the WLC focuses on is sexual and reproductive health rights. In your opinion, is there sufficient education provided to women and young girls on this issue? Additionally, what initiatives does the WLC undertake to ensure that women across South Africa receive comprehensive education in this area?
CB: The WLC works towards the realisation of sexual and reproductive health rights that enable women’s rights to access health services in a manner that is non-coercive, free from violence and all forms of discrimination. Women report facing discrimination for various reasons, including age, making accessing healthcare a complex and confusing task. This impacts their ability to make informed and autonomous decisions about their healthcare. There are also very few accountability mechanisms within the state health care system for such discrimination. We therefore take on strategic litigation, legal advocacy and policy law reform initiatives that promote and protect women’s rights to make choices about their own reproductive health and to have bodily autonomy as envisioned in s 12(2) of the Constitution.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) remains a topic which is not adequately discussed within our homes, communities, schools or workplaces and young girls would benefit from education and awareness campaigns regarding their right to bodily integrity.
The WLC conducts education, training and awareness on SRHR through our network partners and organisations working in the health sector, to young students through our university collaborations and feminist clinic, and to women in marginalised communities through our human rights defender programme.
KR: You recently hosted an event where 15 law students from various universities attended for a week. How important do you believe it is to educate young girls about feminism, and what impact do you think such initiatives have on their perspectives and future roles in society?
CB: Universities are microcosms of our societies and young women at universities continue to report experiencing intersecting forms of discrimination. As part of our strategic focus and transformation vision at the WLC, we were uniquely placed to host a Feminist Clinic that was focused on ensuring that young women who are seeking to enter the legal profession understand the intersection of their identities and rights through a lens of African feminism rooted in the lived reality and context of young women in South Africa.
I am passionate about inspiring and empowering young women to not only understand their intersecting identities but also to have the tools to access and defend their own rights which will enable them to take ownership and agency of their lives. The Feminist Clinic further aimed at inspiring the young law students to become feminist activists on their various university campuses and within their communities to ensure that other women have access to a responsive justice system. The 2024 WLC Feminist Clinic therefore focused on the right to bodily autonomy and the right to be free from violence as we sought to inform our curriculum through the lived experiences of women, particularly of young women at university. During the Feminist Clinic I provided lectures to the students on the role of feminist theory as a tool to advancing substantive equality in law and policy and hope that they will take from these learnings into their everyday application and future legal practice.
KR: If you could amend any law in South Africa, particularly one that significantly impacts women’s right, which one would you choose to change and why?
CB: South Africa has a progressive constitution which includes the right to equality, dignity and several other rights relating to social security, bodily autonomy including the right to be free from violence as well as the right to freedom. The reality for women in South Africa however is that they remain the face of discrimination and inequality. Women’s work remains underpaid and undervalued, and women experience violence in all facets of their lives both at home, at work and within their communities.
For women to live free from the fear of violence, we would have to change the way in which the law is applied through a normative framework as this only places us in a sense of formal equality. To achieve true substantive equality that is based on changed outcomes, as intended by our Constitution, we will need to place the issues of women at the forefront of legal, social and political reforms and centre the voices of those marginalised to inform initiatives tailored to provide protection to the lived experiences of those women. Our laws and policies must therefore be informed by the voices of those most vulnerable and often silenced.
We are currently working towards changing several laws relating to women and the two laws that come to mind relate to the decriminalisation of sex work as the criminalisation results in several human rights violations of sex workers and their continued discrimination when they seek to access basic services.
Another aspect of the law I am passionate about and actively working on is the right of women to publicly name their perpetrators as a way to curb the increasing rate of violence against women. Perpetrators of violence experience impunity when women are silenced, and we have seen an increase of perpetrators using courts and laws designed to protect them to silence them. Over the past three years, I have been working actively to set precedent in South Africa which recognises women’s rights to be free from violence and to publicly name their perpetrators.
KR: This Women’s Month, do you have any advice for young women and girls?
CB: Over the past few years, women have increasingly mobilised and pushed back against violence and patriarchal systems and norms in our society. We have seen this through global feminist movements, which have also been localised through national efforts such as the #TotalShutdown.
There has therefore never been a more essential time for young women to become involved and to shape the narrative of future feminist interventions which are centred in their lived reality and context within South Africa and informed by their needs.
During our Feminist Academy, we encouraged students to take the tools that they learned back to their families and communities and to create solidarity among themselves and across South Africa and I encourage all young women to do the same.
Kgomotso Ramotsho Cert Journ (Boston) Cert Photography (Vega) is the news reporter at De Rebus.
This article was first published in De Rebus in 2024 (Aug) DR 43.
