Following countrywide protests on Friday, South Africa has officially classified violence against women as a national disaster.
The campaign was organised by NGO Women for Change and called for women and LGBT+ communities to “refrain from all paid and unpaid work in workplaces, universities and homes, and to spend no money for the entire day to demonstrate the economic and social impact of their absence”.
The event was titled “G20 Women’s Shutdown”, as it took place just before the 2025 G20 Johannesburg Summit.
Organisers said “until South Africa stops burying a woman every 2.5 hours, the G20 cannot speak of growth and progress”.
Across 15 locations, including Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town, hundreds of women gathered in protest against gender-based violence.
During the protest, demonstrators wore black as a sign of “mourning and resistance”. They staged a 15-minute silent protest as they lay in the streets symbolising that an average 15 lives are lost daily to gender-based violence in South Africa.
According to UN Women, South Africa has one of the world’s highest femicide rates in the world. It is estimated to be around five times higher than the global average.
The National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC), South Africa’s government agency that helps to manage and respond to major emergencies, previously said it would not categorise gender-based violence as a national disaster, as it did not meet legal requirements.
However, after Friday’s protests, the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) has made the decision to classify gender-based violence and femicide as a disaster following “a thorough reassessment of previous reports and updated submissions from organs of state as well as civil organisations”, said Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa.
The BBC reported that the Cooperative Governance Ministry spoke to them and said the categorisation allows government departments to use their allocated budgets to “implement every measure possible” to combat gender-based violence.
On Instagram, Women for Change celebrated in a post to followers saying, “We have won.”
The group said “persistence has been recognised,” and they “have written history together [and] we have finally forced the country to confront the truth”.
The protest concluded a major month-long digital campaign, which saw an online petition collect over a million signatures, and social media profiles turned purple in solidarity with women’s rights.
While this is seen as a major success for women’s rights groups across South Africa, Change for Women is continuing to fight to bring an end to violence against women and girls and to ensure those who have been victims are not lost to the data and headlines.
The organisation’s campaign #UnburyTheTruth, along with their digital Unburiable Casket serves as a “a solemn tribute to every woman whose life was taken by femicide in South Africa in just one year”, according to their website.
The page features a digital casket, enlarged by 33.8% to represent the same increase in femicide in the last year. The design on the casket is a traditional woven Zulu art, with each purple bead in the design representing a woman who has lost her life.
“Behind each bead is a woman. A mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend. The women and children whose lives were cut short are more than statistics; they were individuals with dreams and hopes. Their tragic loss leaves a void in families, communities, and society. But their memory will never be buried,” the text reads.
According to Change for Women’s website, “The casket will remain unburied as a physical and digital measure of the crisis.”
