“If we could all just get onto the same page and understand that consent is mandatory, we wouldn’t have to teach anything else,” says Hulisani Khorombi, a specialist in student capacity building at the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Transformation Office. 

From 31 March to 4 April, UP marked Sexual Assault Awareness Week (SAAW) under the theme ‘Together We Act, United We Change’. The week was part of the international observance of April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and brought together students, staff and UP associates in a series of campus activations and facilitated discussions designed to raise awareness and deepen understanding of consent and sexual violence.

UP Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Francis Petersen noted that actively participating during the SAAW activations and discussions “sends a powerful message that UP stands united against sexual violence, and that we care about the well-being of every member of our University community”.

One of the central themes that emerged during SAAW was the concept of consent, and how people understand and practise it. 

“We often just talk about consent when we’re thinking about sex,” Khorombi says, “but consent goes way beyond that. It’s about our day-to-day life and how people assume consent to other people's bodies and things.”

It’s this misunderstanding, she says, and the tendency to reduce consent to a moment, rather than adopting it as a mindset, that enables and perpetuates violation. Sexual Assault Awareness Week provided a platform for students and staff to engage critically with the concept of consent and the broader issues surrounding sexual violence.

A handprint, a name, a stance

A “wall pledge” on a wall near the Merensky Library on Hatfield campus saw hundreds of students and staff pressing their painted palms to whitewashed bricks, each handprint accompanied by a name and often a message. 

“On social media, it’s easy to say that you stand with something; you can even do that anonymously,” Khorombi says. “The wall pledge forces you to put your hand in paint and pledge that you’re against sexual assault. People walking past are able to see, in real life, that I am here, at this wall; either I'm affected by sexual assault or I want to pledge against it.”

During a discussion hosted in partnership with UP’s Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender (CSA&G), students debated statements about gender, power and sexual norms in an exercise designed to surface assumptions. Using a technique known as the “four corners exercise”, participants physically positioned themselves in a room based on their responses to controversial prompts, before talking about it. Some statements reflected socially ingrained ideas about women’s clothing, alcohol use and power dynamics in relationships. Facilitators, some of whom initially blended into the group, later guided the conversation toward evidence-based reflection. 

The activity and discussions also explored young women’s experiences of consent, as captured in a soon-to-be published monograph developed by the CSA&G. The book is the result of research sparked by student input, which challenged conventional messaging around consent as being a simple “yes” or “no.” The monograph explores consent as a continuous, context-dependent process that must be embedded into everyday interactions, not only limited to sexual activity. 

“A large part of this book talks about how consent needs to be almost embedded in every single thing you do,” Khorombi says. “To use an example I heard from my colleague Tumelo ‘Duke’ Rasebopye, a diversity and inclusion specialist at the Transformation Office: if you’re writing and you have an extra pen on your table, and somebody picks up your pen and says, ‘Hey, can I use your pen?’ – but they’ve already taken it – what they’re really doing is assuming consent.”

While such actions may seem harmless, Khorombi said, they reflect broader attitudes that can lead to more serious violations. 

“If you are not somebody who actively waits for consent, you are going to have a problematic time when you get to something difficult like sex.”

The book also unpacks how early socialisation teaches children that consent is conditional, particularly when dealing with family members or authority figures. 

“We mustn’t force young children to kiss people,” Khorombi says. “What we’re doing there is teaching young children that depending on who you are, consent is non-negotiable.” 

These early lessons, she argues, contribute to a broader societal misunderstanding of consent that fails to account for power dynamics, familiarity and autonomy. 

“We only teach consent when it’s a stranger, when a lot of the time, the dismantling of consent happens with people we know.” 

Khorombi recalls a moment with her niece that illustrated this shift in mindset. Khorombi wanted to put her phone in her niece’s pocket and first said: “Hey, can I touch you?” 

“My niece looked at me and said, ‘What do you mean?’, and I said, ‘I want to put my phone in your pocket. Can I touch you? She said, ‘Yeah, sure, fine… you’re my aunt. It doesn't matter.’ And I said, ‘No, it does matter.’”

This framing, Khorombi explains, underscores UP’s institutional policy, which goes beyond the national legislation in defining what constitutes harassment and inappropriate conduct. 

The way forward

While Sexual Assault Awareness Week has concluded, the issues it sought to address remain urgent. Reflecting on the SAAW initiatives, Nontsikelelo Loteni, Director of UP’s Transformation Office, says: “What stood out for me is that keeping our campuses safe is our collective responsibility. No one can afford to look away. We must be each other’s keepers.”

Loteni emphasised the importance of reporting cases of sexual violence and discrimination. She urged staff and students to familiarise themselves with the Anti-Discrimination Policy and reporting structures, and to take part in ongoing training sessions facilitated by the Transformation Office. 

“If people could understand that consent is different for each and every person, that other people’s bodies are their own, it would eliminate a lot of the cases that end up on our desks,” Khorombi said.