Cape Town - UCT’s Special Tribunal has reconfigured the Kwanele app that was launched in 2023 in a bid to enhance evidence gathering for better outcomes for sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) survivors.
Now rebranded as Gender Rights in Tech (GRIT), a new addition to the project is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot called Zizu, which is linked to their groundbreaking GBV app (formerly Kwanele).
The app provides a directory of localised support services, covering counselling and emergency contacts, catering to users across various regions.
GRIT operation manager Ronel Koekemoer said: “It is a very new project that we started in August 2019, and not many universities have a specialised space for sexual misconduct that includes staff and students.
“Because of the implications, obviously, with labour law that would apply to staff and the administrative law that would apply to students.”
Project manager Anne Isaac said her mandate was to draft a procedure that would be compliant in having a single disciplinary process for staff and students.
“And I am incredibly happy to say that that was approved, and we have been doing this now for five years. But we are still new. We are cutting our teeth on a lot of things.”
Koekemoer said her team’s work is to equip survivors with a disciplinary process that minimises SGBV.
“We try to minimise re-traumatisation in the way that the process unfolds, and a fair process to all parties, but it helps survivors come and give their evidence in a way that is comfortable for them. They can stop when they want to.”
“They can channel the evidence through the panels. They can do so with their cameras off. When a sexual assault occurs, it is one person’s word against another, and survivors are always fighting to prove their cases.
“What I especially want to link with our work is that this app has a feature to record what is happening when the panic button is activated,” she said.