As the womxn and children of this country stand together to disrupt the everyday norm, #WomenForChange has asked South Africans to stand in and show solidarity through going purple on all social media, signing the petition to declare GBV a state of emergency and join a silent protest at 12 noon for 15 minutes symbolising the 15 women killed daily.
This show of support, solidarity and activism for survivors and allies has swept the country on an individual and institutional level as South African social media is splashed in purple. Quite honestly, it is beautiful to see.
People coming forward with their stories on social media show that many South Africans are affected by the persistent alarming rates of GBV and femicide. It is to be expected when #WomenForChange has reported a 33.8% rise in femicide rates in just one year. In South Africa, the scale of gender-based violence is staggering: at least 15 women are killed every day, most often by intimate partners, while roughly 115 rape cases are reported daily, though #WomenForChange notes that as many as 95% of rape cases never reach the police.
More than half of women in the country report experiencing GBV at some point in their lives, with 33.1% of women over 18 subjected to physical violence - more than 7-million individuals - and nearly 10% reporting lifetime sexual violence, affecting more than 2- million. South Africa’s femicide rate is six times higher than the global average, placing it among the worst worldwide, and the crisis extends across generations, with 1 656 children killed between 2023 and 2024. These figures presented by #WomenForChange, highlight not only the prevalence but also the devastating impact of GBV on women, children, LGBTQI+ people and communities at large.
Sadly, this is not the first time women in the country highlight these alarming statistics and call for a standstill and effective action against the scourge of GBV in South Africa. Remember the #TotalShutdown, the intersectional womxn’s march of August 2018 that demanded urgent action against gender-based violence? Yes! We have done this before. We have demanded change, but the promised action and the National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide has evidently not brought much change when looking at the statistics over the past five years.
I mention this because I think we, as a society, need to focus on the everyday societal elements that allow for womxn and children’s voices to continue to go unnoticed and for violence to persist.
We frequently normalise the silence around institutional accountability to womxn and children, allowing these systems to continue enabling interpersonal violence. Yes, we need to hold the government accountable. Yes, we need to disrupt the economy that is built on our silence. However, we need to look at and hold accountable all institutions, and our own, and insist that they go beyond the performative activism that they often so easily adapt when we call for action.
Image: Institutional AdvancementWhat actions have our institutions committed to in response to this national #TotalShutdown call? Are there institutional policies on sexual assault, harassment, on hate crime against LGBTQI+ people? Are these policies aligned to the intersectional feminist concerns highlighted in the 2018 #TotalShutdown? What do our workplaces do when we report all forms of GBV? Do we know the different forms of violence and are they recognised by our institutional policies? What difference would it make if every institution in this country was to have an intersectional feminist policy and procedure to protect womxn?
Maybe, we would not have to explain why the high teenage pregnancy rates are a “statutory rape” issue as seen in a 2024 article by Rebaone Petlele, Sibusiso Mkwananzi and Clifford Odimegwu, and therofore a legal problem. Or why “sex for marks” scandals are a Human Resources problem. They are all problems that our institutions can actively prevent and respond to.
If National Policing, Higher Education, Basic Education, Health, Social Services and Private sectors all had to align themselves to feminist policies against GBVAWC instead of only changing their social media to purple when once again, there is national outrage against GBV maybe as a country, we might see a change. We should not be satisfied with the bare minimum or accepting that GBV is constantly left to womxn alone to fight and raise awareness about; we should start demanding action. Action through feminist policy, revised procedure and towards justice. Declaring solidarity is not enough, we need action, as inaction bolsters complicity. And inaction signifies complacency and upholds the status quo!
#WomensAndGenderStudies #QueerDubs #ThoughtsFromTheLeft #WomensRightsAreHumanRights #ChildrensRightsAreHumanRights #LGBTQIRightsAreHumanRights #WeHaveTheRightToLiveWithoutFear #WeHaveTheRightToBeSafe
*Baleseng Maeneche, Lecturer, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, UWC
**The thoughts expressed in this piece are those of the author. The University of the Western Cape and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies cannot be held liable for views expressed here.
