As representatives of countries all over the world are discussing the theme “Solidarity, Equality, and Sustainability” in Johannesburg at the G20 summit, the people of South Africa are in the aftermath of protests against the sky-high femicide rates in their country.
The protest is led by Women for Change, an NGO which strives for the end of Gender-Based Violence and Femicide. The protest started on social media, where people from all over the world raised awareness about the violence in South Africa by changing their profile pictures to purple. Women for Change urged women and members of the LQBTQI+ community 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’ on the 21st of November. At 12:00 in the afternoon, women laid down in silence for 15 minutes to honour the 15 women who are murdered on average per day in the country. This rate is 5 times the global average. The G20 cannot, says Women for Change, ‘speak of growth and progress’ if the rate of Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) is this extreme.
The distinction between femicide and general homicide — also a major problem in South Africa — is that femicide has a gender-related motivation and is driven by discrimination, as UN Women defines the phenomenon.
There are many causes, both superficial and deeply rooted, that lead to this extreme rate of GBVF, as well as violence in general, which is also a recurring problem in South Africa that shouldn’t be ignored.
The first problem, and perhaps the most superficial, is the failing criminal justice system in South Africa. In the period from 2012-2024, the amount of murder cases that were solved went down with almost 60 per cent, which goes hand in hand with the general efficiency (the ability to investigate and to bring charges) of the police declining, even though the murder rate remained high. GBVF, in particular, increased, with an 8,6 per cent increase in murders of women from 2023 to 2024. In June 2024, the Public Protector published an investigative report that showed that various legal institutions constituted dishonest administration and improper demeanor while they processed gender-based violence-related matters.
Furthermore, there are multiple structural causes that contribute to the high rates of femicide in South Africa. The financial state of the country is one of these, as the economy took a big hit from the 2008 financial crisis and later the Covid crisis. South Africa is on of the most unequal society in the world, with an unemployment rate of 32 per cent. Poverty is heavily correlated with domestic violence: women are 3.5 times more likely to experience domestic violence if they live in a low-income household, because of, for instance, financial dependence.
Additionally, the long legacy of apartheid also plays a big role in upholding the high rate of violence. Even though apartheid was abolished in the 1990s, the effects are still sternly ingrained in South African culture. The rate of GBVF is higher for Black women, which shows that there is still significant systemic inequality in the country, as a result of the years of apartheid.
As well as the effects of apartheid, patriarchy is also deeply entrenched in South African culture, with no less than 70 per cent of men who think that women should obey their husbands and eight per cent who think that women occasionally deserve to be beaten, as was found by a study conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). Furthermore, almost 48 per cent of South Africans believe that domestic violence is a private matter and not a criminal one.
As the HSRC proclaims: GBVF is the result of ‘deeply ingrained societal norms and structures that perpetuate male dominance and reinforce gender hierarchies … leading to female subordination, systemic inequalities, and violence against women’.
In the past decade, there have been various attempts to counteract GBVF, which seemed successful for a couple of years, because the femicide rate dropped. However, in 2020, the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, spoke of a ‘second pandemic’ of GBVF, with the rate increasing again. One can argue that the Covid crisis was the reason for this relapse.
The protests of last month proved successful, with Ramaphosa having declared GBVF as a national disaster. He said the government will use ‘every means at their disposal to end this crisis’. These ‘means’ are undoubtedly broad and complex, and it will probably take a long time before the norms and values of a country with such a painful history systematically change, but it is certainly not impossible. The ‘cultural reorientation’, as Al Jazeera calls it, should start in the domestic sphere, and is sustainable through education, communities and fora. Ramaphosa’s words were a crucial step, but practical, radical change is needed to guarantee safe lives for the women of South Africa.
Photo by Tumisu via https://pixabay.com/photos/violence-against-women-domestic-4209778/
