The National Strategic Plan (NSP) on Gender Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) provides a strategic roadmap that sets out specific plans for a multi-sectoral approach to end GBVF and highlights key accountability issues.

The first Presidential Summit on GBVF was held in 2018, in response to the 24 demands submitted by the #TheTotalShutdown Intersectional Womxn’s Movement to President Cyril Ramaphosa, following 27 nationwide marches comprising the largest co-ordinated protest by women to ever happen in South Africa.

Women from all walks of life used the start of Women’s Month to demonstrate their frustration and anger at the increasing levels of gender-based violence in South Africa.

The protests came shortly after Statistics SA revealed in June 2018 that the murder rate for women increased by 117 per cent between 2015 and 2016/17. The number of women who experienced sexual offences also jumped from 31 665 in 2015/16 to 70 813 in 2016/17, an increase of 127 per cent.

Paper by the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference Parliamentary Liaison Office