Every 2.5 hours, a woman is murdered in South Africa. A country where every 12 minutes, a woman reports a rape to the police, and millions more endure harassment, domestic violence, and abuse in silence every day.
These harrowing statistics has promoted women’s rights
organisation, Women for Change, calling for a national shutdown on Friday,
ahead of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg this weekend.
The organisation is calling on all women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community across South Africa 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.
Many social media users has changed their profile pictures purple in solidarity with the alarming rate of GBVF in the country.
Women for Change wants Gender-Based Violence and Femicide
be declared a National Disaster.
‘’I think it gives
them a safe platform for their voices to finally be heard. Since we've
announced the shutdown, we've had so many women reach out. We see it all over
social media. Women who've never spoken about these stories before have finally
felt safe enough to share what they've experienced. And it's actually shocking,
I think, for the public to see the numbers of women in this country who've been
affected by gender-based violence and the families affected by femicide, which
I think is a direct contrast with the statistics that we have,’’ said Merlize
Jogiat, Women for Change spokesperson and Activist, who spoke on Bush Radio’s
everyday People Show.
President Cyril Ramaphosa says South Africa will now
classify gender-based violence and femicide as a “crisis” that must be urgently
addressed. Ramaphosa made the remarks on Thursday on the sidelines of receiving
the declaration from the G20 Social Summit in Boksburg.
‘’The initial call was for gender-based violence
to declare a national disaster. And we are so happy to actually announce that
the president did talk about classification of that, which leads to declaration
earlier today at the G20 social summit. So we have achieved the goal we have
fought so hard for, but obviously the next steps is what that implementation
looks like. But the reason we're still having the shutdown is because we need
to demonstrate the importance of women in South Africa and the LGBTIA+ community
to this economy. What would this country be like without women? How would the
economy even survive? And since the finances and how the country is run
financially is going to be spoken about so greatly at the G20, we want to
really make a big impact the day before so that the world stage and other
countries can recognize how deeply entrenched this problem is in our country,’’
said Jogiart.
She says more needs to be done to address GBVF, such as
education and implementation from government.
Jogiart stressed that Friday’s shutdown is not a protest or
march.
‘’This is not a protest and it's not a march. I have to
state that very clearly. There is really no sense in fighting violence with
violence. We see now violence in this country. We want to change the system by fighting
in a violent way. So this is a violent protest that we've been having. We've
asked women in the LGBTQI community to stay home on Friday from unpaid or paid work.
And if they are unable to do that, they can join us at 12 o'clock for a silent
lie down, which means we're going to be wearing all black and lying on the ground
in memory of the sisters that we have lost to this fight. We will also be
hosting a live with someone reading out the victims of genocide names in that
15 minutes. So it should be a silent demonstration because it is
essentially a procession and a remembrance of those lives lost.’’
Done By: Mitchum George
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