South Africa declares gender-based violence a national disaster amid G20 protests | Violence against women and girls
Hundreds of women gathered in cities across South Africa on Friday to protest gender-based violence in the country ahead of this weekend’s G20 summit in Johannesburg.
Demonstrators took part in demonstrations in 15 locations, including Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban, wearing black as a sign of “mourning and resistance”.
They staged a peaceful, silent 15-minute lie down protest, symbolizing the 15 lives lost every day due to gender-based violence in the country.
South Africa has one of the highest femicide rates in the world; UN Women estimates this rate is five times the global average.
The action, called the G20 Women’s Shutdown, was organized by the NGO Women For Change, which called on women and LGBTQ+ communities to “abstain from all paid and unpaid work in workplaces, universities and homes, and spend no money for an entire day to demonstrate the economic and social impact of their absence.”
“Because the G20 cannot talk about growth and progress until South Africa stops burying a woman every 2.5 hours.”
The lay-in protest was the culmination of the group’s month-long campaign to lobby the South African government to declare gender-based violence a national disaster. As an online petition garnered more than a million signatures, many people, including Grammy-winning singer Tyla, turned their social media profiles purple, a color often associated with women’s rights.
In response to the campaign, National Disaster Management Center (NDMC) chairman Dr. Bongani Elias Sithole said in a statement on Friday. Classifying gender-based violence and femicide as a national disaster
NDMC had earlier said that the classification did not meet the legal requirements defined in the Disaster Management Act; however, after assessing the “persistent and immediate risks to life safety posed by ongoing acts of violence,” the center concluded that the threshold had now been reached.
Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Velenkosini Hlabisa welcomed the decision, which will allow authorities to allocate resources to combat gender-based violence and strengthen support for existing structures.
“Women in our country are crying out that they need to focus more on gender-based violence,” South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said in his speech at the G20 civil society summit on Thursday. he said. During the event, he said the government would classify gender-based violence and femicide as a “crisis”.
Women For Change congratulated the announcement on its Instagram account and published a statement saying “we won”.
“Together we made history. We finally forced the country to face the facts.” He added that he plans to hold a follow-up meeting next week to discuss the “detailed action plan and timeline.”
