City of Johannesburg

Johannesburg Development Agency

No 3 Helen Joseph Street PO Box 61877 Tel +27(0) 11 688 7851 (O)
The Bus Factory Marshalltown Fax +27(0) 11 688 7899/63
Newtown 2107 E-mail: info@jda.org.za
Johannesburg, 2000

www.jda.org.za
www.joburg.org.za

To: All news editors

For immediate release
25 November 2022

ORCHARDS CLINIC ART CREATES DIALGUE ON GBV

‘Your Penis is not a Weapon’ - The GBV-themed mural at Orchards Clinic by Tracey Rose
creates a dialogue around domestic violence in our country.

The 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence campaign commences on Friday, 25

November and will run nationally until Saturday, 10 December. The global theme for this
year’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is: “Unite! Activism to end
violence against women and girls.”

The campaign aims to create conversation, generate awareness, share important information,
and highlight ways we can all help tackle gender-based violence.

The Orchards Clinic is a vibrant, primary healthcare facility implemented by Johannesburg

Development Agency (JDA). The facility aims to provide health care services in Norwood,
Highlands North, Orange Groove, Orchards, and surrounding areas.

Within the courtyard of this state-of-the-art facility lies a mural creating dialogue around
Gender-Based Violence, titled, ‘Your Penis is Not a Weapon. This mural can be seen from
waiting rooms within the clinic - allowing people to view and engage with the mural.

Directors
L Brenner (Chairperson) M Mongane (CEO) LB Matshidze N Ntingane S Marota A Dreyer M Malinga W Thwala P Raphalalani C Whittle R Shirinda (Company Secretary)
Registration Number: 2001/005101/07
The mural, commissioned by the City of Johannesburg, took close to six weeks to complete
and was created by the artist Tracey Rose. She collaborated with artists like Adilson De
Oliveira & Mzoxolo ‘X’ Mayongo of the Magolide Collective, Khanyisile Mawhayi, and Langa
Maope.

“We hope the work will take the edge off the pervasive silence that reinforces the trauma of
GBV and other social ills. This space of engagement in Orchards Clinic has collectively
envisioned elements of hope, strength, protection, safety, and renewal we all desire,” Tracy
explained.

“We are dealing with a profoundly damaged society, and the clinic site is the centre for healing
this trauma and is the core visual intension of the mural, and its considered imagery and
material selection,” she said.

For Tracy, the choice to include a mural in Orchards Clinic might come as a necessity or the
ability art must heal. Often, when people go to the clinic in the most vulnerable state.

Tracey elaborated that that the choice of why to produce a mural in this location, came down
to two things. “How do we as artists produce work that can function as a tool of healing,
conversation, and cultural production, within a space in which the general public will have the
time on their hands, and subsequently, interest to engage in the idea’s we are putting
forward,” she said.

The mural depicts the pervasive, traumatising, and decrepit social ills associated with
contributing to the plague that is GBV in South Africa. It has eight panels, in which a linear
narrative occurs within the stylistic realm of a comic book.

In the mural, a monster emerges from a swamp which is literal metaphor for the idea of
Gender-Based Violence. The monster impacts society, and signifiers of GBV’s causes,
effects, and after-math is depicted. These initial panels serve to demonstrate the cause and
effect GBV has on society, and how it effects not only women and children, but also men.

In the next section of the mural, society has enough, and after striking a blow on a small child,
a small child garnering a likeness to Super-Woman then kills the monster and brings it to its
fateful end.

The following panels depict an achievement, a Utopian, in South Africa, drawing referring to
a futuristic imagining of Gerard Sekoto - ‘Yellow House: A Street in Sophia Town’.

In the final sections of the mural, a tree grows under blue light, enveloped in mosaicked
precious stones and crystals. A quote above the mural reads, ‘Perhaps one day, Africa’s men
will protect her women, children, and men again’.

The title, ‘Your Penis is not a Weapon’, is translated into many languages and repeated
throughout the work, a tagline directed at men. “However, more important was the possibility
of the tagline of the work used as a mantra of revolt by women, who may adopt it to distinguish
a revolt against perpetrators of GBV,” Tracey said.

Tracey hopes that, through this mural, a conversation can be created and heard amongst the
victims of GBV in understanding that speaking out against one’s perpetrators and holding
them accountable is a possibility that should be supported and ordained by the government
and law enforcement, but also from a grass-roots level within society.

“A mural is not going to end GBV overnight. However, an ensemble of artists hopes this work
sparks not just the tiniest conversations around the ills of GBV poisoning our country currently.
If the work can do this, we believe it to be a success,” Tracey said.
ABOUT ORCHARDS CLINIC

Orchard’s clinic opened its doors to the public on Monday, 05 September 2022, by the
provincial health department. The clinic is part of the Joburg 2040 Growth and Development
Strategy (GDS) and lies along the Louis Botha Corridor of Freedom.

The JDA constructed the facility to include 20 consulting rooms, emergency rooms, antenatal,
ARV and TB service facilities, a courtyard, office space and a parking area for staff and
patients. The building also incorporates environmentally friendly features allowing for
rainwater harvesting, solar heating, ventilation, and a vegetable garden.

ENDS
Issued by: Kenneth Nxumalo
Johannesburg Development Agency

For more information:

Elias Nkabinde
Email: enkabinde@jda.org.za
076 961 8022
www.jda.org.za