Gender-based violence and femicide declared national disaster, but with caveats

On 21 November 2025, Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Velenkosini Hlabisa, welcomed the decision by the head of the National Disaster Management Centre, Dr Bongani Sithole, to classify GBVF as a national disaster in terms of Section 23 of the Disaster Management Act, 2002 (Act No. 57 of 2002). The centre “has concluded that GBVF now meets the threshold of a potential disaster as defined in the act”.

The announcement by the Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs explained that the classification does not invoke emergency powers, but reinforces and strengthens the systems already in place:

• The Inter-Ministerial Committee on GBVF
• Intergovernmental Committee on Disaster Management
• The Natjoints Priority Committee
• The 90-day GBVF Acceleration Programme
• The expansion of Thuthuzela Care Centres
• The strengthening of sexual offences courts
• The reform of the criminal justice system

The announcement comes after civil society organisation Women for Change gathered more than a million signatures in a petition urging the government to declare gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) a national disaster.

Read more: Turning Purple: Women for Change calls for national gender-based violence shutdown ahead of G20 Summit

On 20 November 2025, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared that GBVF is a national crisis.

Previously, the President declared GBVF a national crisis in 2019, following the #TheTotalShutdown Intersectional Womxn’s Movement, with 27 nationwide marches on 1 August 2018. This was the first step in developing the National Strategic Plan on GBV and Femicide.

A National Crisis versus a National Disaster has different implications. When a National Disaster is declared, it streamlines bureaucracy to speed up projects, allows for emergency funds to be released, and regulations are issued automatically, while declaring a National Crisis does not carry the same powers.

The declaration is that GBVF is a National Disaster will not invoke emergency powers, therefore new regulations will not be introduced, and it is unclear at this stage whether emergency funds will be released or projects sped up.

Notably one of the things left out of the National Disaster classification is ensuring that the National Council on GBVF is up and running.

Accountability and the National Council

The National Council was conceived of as a central body to drive implementation, oversight and accountability of the National Strategic Plan on GBVF, in 2020. It is currently not operational.

Speaking to Daily Maverick at the 12th TEHA CEO Dialogues on Southern Africa, a bilateral summit with The European House Ambrosetti and Africa, on 20 November, Minister of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Sindiswe Chikunga, said: “Our aim is now to have this board established at least by the first of April next year. We are trying to push the National Assembly to move with speed. We are happy that, at least for one now, the National Treasury has allocated some money towards the establishment of a National Council.”

Chikunga explained the process; in 2020 the president announced the establishment of the GBVF Council, resulting in the department drafting legislation, taking it to the Cabinet, and then consulting Parliament.

The Parliamentary processes concluded last year, and the president signed it into law in May 2024, but it was not in force until the proclamation on 15 November, the minister said.

“From our side, we immediately wrote to the Speaker on 31 October, informing the Speaker that we have heard that the president has agreed to proclaim the act on 15 November, and Parliament, the National Assembly, has a responsibility to nominate members from the private sector and civil society who are going to form part of the board.

“We needed also to identify eight members from different departments who are going to serve. So we’re waiting for seven members from the National Assembly who will then be presented to the president, then to combine those members together with eight members from public service, and therefore announce a vote.”

Once the board was established by April 2026 a CEO would be appointed, who would then appoint staff, and that would constitute the council, she said.

G20 declaration vetoed

The minister attended the G20 Empowerment of Women Working Group Ministerial Meetings in Brazil from 9 to 11 October 2024. The working group was handed over to South Africa for 2025.

The group was unable to reach consensus on its final ministerial declaration. The nature of consensus-based negotiations in the G20 means that every country essentially has a veto, and it only takes one country to block consensus. The country objected to references of “gender” and “unpaid work” throughout the document.

“It’s like you can’t pronounce the words gender, all women and children, equity, Sustainable Development Goals, Beijing Declaration — if you say that, people actually frown. The unfortunate thing is that when powerful countries begin to say this, some who had the same and shared such visions, they then take the front stage, because now they’re being supported by big power, powerful economies,” the minister said to Daily Maverick.

“We could not, for instance, adopt our declaration, because we were not prepared, as South Africa, to water down our declaration for the sake of having it adopted,” she said. This resulted in a chairpersons statement rather than a ministerial declaration.

G20 Empowerment of Women Working Group

The Empowerment of Women Working Group decided to focus on three priorities; financial inclusion, the care economy (paid and unpaid work) and GBVF. This resulted in a number of summits, the minister said, such as a North West Summit focusing on expert briefings, resulting in legacy projects on what to do when it comes to financial inclusion.

The minister said that few people understood what the care economy was in South Africa.

“It’s women that are actually doing it, and families as a result, some they drop out of school because they’ve got to take care of somebody at home who’s ill. But even that which is paying, it is never recognised. Nobody thinks about the person who washed this dress. They see me, they forget that there’s somebody behind who did that, possibly paid.”

She said that care work was an economy, and that it contributed to the GDPs of countries, and that South Africa needed a strategy.

The African Union invited the working group to assist in drafting the care economy convention for the continent.

“That makes us happy, because not only are we going to have our strategy as our legacy project, but also we shall have contributed to Africa developing its own convention,” the minister said to the Daily Maverick.

GBVF in South Africa

The minister explained that they wanted to focus on young boys and girls, and socialising a positive masculinity, acknowledging the high rate of women-headed and child-headed families in South Africa.

“But we also feel that we need to look at what is happening in our communities that is socialising our young children. I will give an example. For instance, there is no water, the community decide to strike, and in the process, they remove children from school and they work together, protesting.

“In the process of that process, protesting, as it always happened, they burn a library together with the children, and nobody did socialise these children about it. They go to the University of Fort Hare. They go to Wits. They go to UCT.”

“They have problems with the National Student Financial Aid Scheme. They remember what they were taught in the primary school or high school, that if you have a problem, if you’re frustrated by anything, you burn. You see it on TV, burning libraries, buildings.”

The minister said that when people finished university, they paid for things for the first time, and so while a man may not burn his own house, he may decide to physically abuse his partner.

“So we’re looking at such things to say, how do we break that side, but going to communities to say, how is it possible that as a country, we are so violent? Because once we talk about gender-based violence, crime is violent, protest is violent, etc. So we’re looking at that, and that is why we have said one of our legacy projects is positive masculinity.”

In the Constitution, Section 17 of the Bill of Rights guarantees everyone the right to peacefully and without arms assemble, demonstrate, picket and present petitions. DM