The colour purple is bright, powerful and demands to be seen.
In the past few weeks, it has become an ever-increasing sight on social media seeing many users changing their profile pictures to resemble the now iconic colour and echo the sentiment of solidarity with our sisters facing Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF).
This call to action highlights Women for Change’s unprecedented demonstration to honour women suffering at the hands of GBVF, through a national shutdown on Friday 21 November, just before the start of the G20 Summit in Johannesburg.
The campaign aims to force the government to declare GBVF a national disaster.
Sadly, it’s become increasingly clear that the threat of violence and abuse remains a constant threat in the daily lives of our women, many of whom suffer in silence, out of fear that they or their children could be killed or that they would be unable to feed themselves.
So many women have and continue to endure pain, hardship and death for the benefit of their
children and families, developing trauma from staying in toxic relationships rewiring their neural
network and the way they process pain and love.
Despite the monumental progress of the Feminist movement and the women who had to fight for
the right to vote and work twice as hard to earn their place in the workplace, ironically, it appears
the more things change the more they stay the same.
From 1956 to 2024: A continuing struggle
Back in 1956, history was made by the brave women who marched to Parliament and Pretoria protesting against the pass laws, despite the threats of police brutality, tear gas or incarceration.
The women also contributed to the Freedom Charter with a document called “What Women
Demand”, addressing needs such as: child care provisions, housing, education, equal pay, and equal
rights with men in regard to property, marriage and guardianship of children.
This is one of many historic examples where women had to defend and fight for their rights to be treated equally.
And yet, in 2025 the nation’s crime statistics still paint a grim picture of the violence, abuse and harassment plaguing our women.
According to the South African Police Service’s quarterly data for 2024-’25, between July and
September last year, 957 women were murdered, 1 567 survived attempted murders, and 14 366 experienced assaults resulting in grievous bodily harm.
During the same period, 10 191 sexual assault cases were reported to the police.
SA’s femicide rate is approximately five times higher than the global average and one in three
South African women aged 16 and older has experienced physical violence in their lifetime, said a study by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).
As a man, I could only imagine the terror our women face when going for a walk at night or
climbing into an Uber, hoping and praying that they are safe.
We’ve become numb as a society to hearing about the news of all the young women, some of whom have recently graduated, that have died at the hands of their partners.
Men Must step up and take responsibility
As men, we should and ought to do much better at calling individuals out who perpetrate these
crimes, belittle women’s rights as jokes and we must hold ourselves to a better standard and be the
gentlemen our mothers raised us to be.
It has to start at home with changing the narrative and the way we speak to our friends and understanding that sexism should never be minimised and no-one should be mocking the rights of women.
As men, we have to cultivate a culture of listening, protecting and upholding the rights and safety of
not just the women in our daily lives and start to see them as our fellow sisters.
The novel The Colour Purple by Alice Walker also tells the eerily relevant story of traumatised women suffering in silence, lacking basic education, has a physical disability from living their truth and chasing the dreams they wish to pursue.
However, as the book nears its conclusion we see our main protagonist, Nettie, find empowerment
and improve her education and complete her character arc in the best version of herself.
There is hope and there is a brighter future awaiting all our sisters and society despite this dark
cloud of violence and abuse we’re navigating, but we and the government need to call the senseless
violence out and stand together with our women, our mothers, our sisters.
As the late great artist and civil rights activist Nina Simone so eloquently put it: “You know what
freedom means to me? No fear. No fear!”
