Watch: Ramaphosa declares GBVF a national crisis
South Africans are rallying behind growing demands for urgent action to address gender-based violence and femicide.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has officially declared gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) as a national crisis.
The Witness reports that he made the declaration at the G20 Social Summit held yesterday in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng.
The declaration came on the eve of Women for Change’s (WFC) #WomenShutdown set to take place today, nationwide, with thousands of supporters taking part.
The shutdown encourages women to withdraw from society for the day, not spend money, wear black to honour those lives lost to GBVF and observe a 15-minute silent lie down for the 15 women buried every day.
The WFC started a petition in April, stating the need to declare the crisis a national disaster; however, it had been rejected at just 770 000 signatures. It now sits at 1 098 078 signatures.
Yesterday morning, WFC hired a billboard, stating: “Welcome to the country where women are only safe in a casket.”
The image depicts the organisation’s unburied casket representing all the women killed by GBV.
The organisation is yet to comment on the president’s declaration.
By yesterday afternoon, during the G20 Social Summit, where delegations, guests and other stakeholders met at the Birchwood Conference Centre, Ekurhuleni, Ramaphosa declared GBVF as a national crisis.
In his speech, he spoke of hearing the outcry for women’s and children’s voices to be heard, and the prioritisation of their health and well-being.
“It was the great African revolutionary Thomas Sankara who said there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. He said, ‘May my eyes never see, and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence’,” he said.
We cannot build societies rooted in equality unless those societies uphold the rights of women and girls.
Ramaphosa said that sustainable societies are those that recognise, value and compensate the labour and economic contribution of women and that the violence perpetrated by men against women ‘erodes the social fabric of nations’.
“No society can thrive for as long as GBVF continue and the agency of women is denied. It imposes a heavy burden that constrains development and weakens inclusive growth,” he said.
Ramaphosa said that men and boys are critical partners in transforming the harmful norms and advancing gender justice, stating that they too must be actively involved in challenging inherited attitudes, power imbalances and social structures that normalise violence and silent victims.
“Here in South Africa, we have declared GBVF a national crisis. We have agreed, among all social partners, that we need to take extraordinary and concerted action, using every means at our disposal, to end this crisis.”
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