On the morning of November 21, the sprawling lawns of the Union Buildings in Pretoria—the historic seat of the South African government—were transformed into a sea of black and purple. Thousands of women, draped in mourning attire with accents of royal purple, gathered not just to protest, but to grieve and demand a future where their lives are no longer treated as disposable. The air was thick with the resonant chords of “Senzeni na?” (What have we done?), a traditional struggle song that once echoed through the streets during the fight against apartheid, now repurposed for a new war against domestic terror. As the clock struck midday, the singing stopped. In a haunting display of collective grief, the thousands in attendance lay prostrate on the grass, observing fifteen minutes of absolute silence. Each minute represented one of the fifteen women killed every single day in South Africa—a staggering statistic brought to the forefront by the nonprofit organization Women for Change.
This was the “G20 Women’s Shutdown,” a meticulously coordinated national strike designed to coincide with the gathering of world leaders in Johannesburg for the G20 Summit. The strategy was clear: while the world’s most powerful economies discussed trade, infrastructure, and global finance, South African women would make the country’s most shameful crisis impossible to ignore. Organized by Women for Change, the movement called for a total economic and social withdrawal. Women were asked to stay home from work, withhold their spending power, and flood social media with purple-themed imagery. The digital campaign resonated globally, with supporters from London to Rio de Janeiro changing their profile pictures in a show of international sisterhood.
The urgency of the moment was personified by protesters like 28-year-old Lebogang Ntsia. Standing amidst the throng at the Union Buildings, Ntsia spoke of the personal toll of the crisis. “I came here not only because I’ve got people that I know who have been victims of femicide and gender-based violence, but because this is a crisis,” she said, her voice steady with resolve. Ntsia drew a direct line between the current movement and the historic 1956 Women’s March, where 20,000 women marched to the same spot to protest pass laws. “Just as women many years ago protested here and showed up for the changes that we are privileged to experience today, we also need to be the generation that steps up.” Her words underscored a growing sentiment among South African youth: that the freedoms won in 1994 remain incomplete as long as women are hunted in their own homes.
The empirical data backing this outrage is nothing short of an indictment of the current social order. The First South African National Gender-based Violence Study, a landmark report released in 2024 with support from UN Women, revealed that 35.8 percent of South African women—more than one in three—have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. These are not merely numbers; they represent a systemic failure of protection. The Shutdown was not limited to the capital; its effects were felt across the nation’s infrastructure. Educational institutions paused lectures to observe the midday silence, major retailers briefly shuttered their doors or halted operations, and the sheer volume of the protest dominated international news cycles, effectively hijacking the G20’s carefully curated media narrative.
The political response to this groundswell of pressure was swift and unprecedented. Confronted with a petition bearing over one million signatures, the South African government took the radical step of declaring gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) a national disaster. This legal designation is a critical turning point; it allows the state to bypass certain bureaucratic hurdles, unlocking emergency resources and elevating the crisis to the same level of priority as a natural catastrophe or a pandemic.
Addressing the G20 Social Summit, President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged the gravity of the declaration. “We have agreed, among all social partners, that we need to take extraordinary and concerted action—using every means at our disposal—to end this crisis,” he stated. Ramaphosa’s rhetoric shifted toward the structural, emphasizing that the burden of ending violence cannot rest solely on the shoulders of the victims. He called for a fundamental re-evaluation of how men and boys are socialized, urging a direct challenge to the patriarchal attitudes that normalize aggression and control.
Aleta Miller, the UN Women Representative in South Africa, echoed this sentiment, reminding the global community of the human faces behind the statistics. “They are mothers, daughters, sisters, friends—whose lives have been cut short or forever changed,” Miller said. She argued that the declaration of a national disaster must be the catalyst for a “comprehensive, all-of-society approach” that moves beyond mere policing to address the root psychological and economic causes of violence.
The timing of the protest was also a strategic masterstroke in terms of global diplomacy. The G20 is currently experiencing a unique “Global South Troika,” with three consecutive presidencies—India in 2023, Brazil in 2024, and South Africa in 2025—placing gender equality at the heart of the world’s premier economic forum. This transition has seen a significant evolution in how the G20 discusses women. India’s presidency was a watershed, pivoting the conversation from “women’s empowerment” to “women-led development,” a shift that recognizes women as active drivers of the economy rather than passive recipients of aid. Brazil built on this by hosting the first-ever formal meeting of the Women’s Empowerment Working Group and centering the “care economy”—the often-unpaid domestic labor performed by women—as a core economic metric.
South Africa’s 2025 presidency, themed “Solidarity, Equality, and Sustainability,” arrives at a moment of historical convergence. It marks five years until the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals and the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Under South Africa’s leadership, the G20 agenda has expanded to include African Union participation on an unprecedented scale, focusing on land rights, health equity, and agriculture. However, the shadow of violence looms over these economic aspirations. The South African presidency has utilized the Women’s Empowerment Working Group, with the technical support of UN Women, to insist that economic prosperity is impossible in a society where half the population lives in fear.
Despite these diplomatic strides, the gap between policy and reality remains vast. Most G20 nations are still failing to meet the “Brisbane Goal” of reducing the labor force participation gap between men and women by 25 percent by 2025. Furthermore, climate change is disproportionately affecting women in the Global South, yet only 1.7 percent of global climate finance reaches small-scale female producers. Above all, the grim reality persists: not a single country in the world has successfully eradicated violence against women and girls.
The G20 Ministerial Dialogue on Positive Masculinities, held in October, sought to address this global failure by focusing on the “perpetrator” side of the equation. The dialogue brought together an unlikely coalition of government officials, civil society activists, and traditional and religious leaders. Deputy Minister Mmapaseka Steve Letsike delivered a stinging critique of traditional social structures during the assembly, declaring that “patriarchy is a human crisis, not merely a women’s issue.”
Anna Mutavati, the UN Women Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, expanded on this during the ministerial meetings. She pointed out that whether in physical spaces or the burgeoning world of online harassment, the “dominance of patriarchal masculinities” is the common thread in the perpetration of GBV. The G20’s resulting recommendations focused on the necessity of engaging men and boys as strategic partners in change, rather than just targets of criminal justice. This involves strengthening accountability mechanisms in every sector—from the courtroom to the pulpit—to ensure that harmful norms are no longer protected by silence or tradition.
As South Africa transitions into the annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, the impact of the November 21 Shutdown continues to ripple through the halls of power. The movement has evolved significantly since the 2018 “Total Shutdown” march, which saw women occupy the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Since then, the government has launched a National Strategic Plan on GBVF, backed by a staggering R21 billion (approximately USD 1.2 billion) investment. Legislative progress has also followed, with the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Bill being signed into law in May 2024, providing a permanent statutory body to oversee the national response.
The G20 Women’s Shutdown has proven that a new generation of South Africans will no longer accept “awareness” as a substitute for action. By seizing the global stage during the G20 Summit, they have forced a domestic crisis into the international spotlight, demanding that the scale of the government’s response finally matches the scale of the tragedy. For the women who lay in silence on the lawns of the Union Buildings, the message was clear: the time for “extraordinary measures” is not in the future—it is now.
