Thembisile Yende to be laid to rest
Eskom employee Thembisile Yende will be laid to rest today.
Her funeral service is underway at the Kwa-Thema Community Hall in Spring on the East Rand.
The 29-year-old woman was found dead in a store room at a substation in Springs on Monday.
She had been reported ten days earlier.
Energy minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, Eskom's board chairperson Ben Ngubane and Saftu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi are at the funeral service where family, friends and colleagues have gathered to pay their final respects.
Gauteng Department of Community Safety MEC Nkosi Malobane says we need to look in the mirror and ask what kind of society we wish to live in.
She used the opportunity to speak out against violence against women.
"Why do we allow this to happen? Sometimes we use culture to think it is right to abuse women. Why do you, if you are an abuser as
well, do it?"
She had this message for men: "Our bodies don't belong to you. Our lives don't belong to you."
She says language plays an important role in challenging the lens through which women are viewed.
"As a nation, starting from leadership, the language that we use, every chance we get, we communicate anger."
Vavi says the judicial system is as sick as our society.