Ramaphosa Puts GBV Funding at Center of Budget Plan

The cost of South Africa’s gender-based violence crisis is usually counted in lives. This week it was also counted in budget lines, court dockets and institutional credibility. On Tuesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation on the government’s response to gender-based violence and femicide, promising new resources through the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, expanded Sexual Offences Courts, stronger forensic and DNA processing, and tightened bail laws for perpetrators of gender-based violence and domestic abuse.

The address followed the discovery of the bodies of 11 women in Ekurhuleni since July. It landed in the same period that suspended Deputy National Police Commissioner Lieutenant-General Shadrack Sibiya appeared in the Randburg Magistrates’ Court facing five charges, including rape, sexual grooming of a minor and trafficking in persons. The allegations involve a 16-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman. Sibiya has denied the allegations and told the court that his sexual encounter with the 18-year-old was consensual.

That coincidence of timing cuts to the heart of the trust problem. The police are one of the first institutions survivors are expected to turn to. Women are told to report abuse, report threats, report missing people and rely on the criminal justice system to respond. When a senior police official is himself before a court on serious sexual-offence charges, the question of whether those institutions deserve that trust becomes difficult to avoid. This is not about declaring Sibiya guilty before the court has reached a decision; he is entitled to due process. But the allegations alone raise an uncomfortable question about the institutions charged with protecting women and children.

The President himself acknowledged that what has been done has not been enough. He pointed out that seven years ago, in September 2019, he stood before the nation to speak about the same crisis. Seven years is long enough for a child to grow into a teenager, for a teenager to become a young woman, and for families to bury daughters, sisters, mothers and friends while another generation grows up hearing that they must simply be careful.

That framing of caution is where, for many, the problem lies. Women are told not to walk alone, not to walk at night, not to trust strangers, to watch their drink, share their location, check their surroundings and get home before dark. At some point the question has to shift from what women can do to stay safe to what institutions and society are doing to stop men from harming women.

The measures announced on Tuesday go beyond rhetoric, at least on paper. Beyond the budget commitments, the President directed the police and the Justice Department to conduct a national case-recovery operation focusing on unresolved murders, attempted murders, rape and serious sexual offences involving women and children. Within 60 days, government must identify unresolved cases, cases awaiting forensic evidence, cases where suspects have been identified but not arrested, and cases where investigations or prosecutions have been unreasonably delayed. There will also be women’s safety audits to identify broken streetlights, overgrown public spaces, abandoned buildings, unsafe transport routes and poorly secured parks, with results published so communities can see what has been identified, what has been fixed and what remains outstanding.

These are important commitments, but South African women have heard commitments before. In 2019, government spoke about strengthening the criminal justice system, addressing case backlogs and delays in DNA testing, improving rape kits and increasing resources to fight gender-based violence. So this time the question should not only be what government is promising. It should be how the country will know that it has happened. If there is a 60-day audit, South Africans must be able to see the results. If there are unresolved rape and murder cases, communities deserve to know whether those cases are moving. If there is a forensic backlog, it must be visible whether that backlog is actually being reduced. If municipalities identify dangerous public spaces, the public should see whether those spaces are being fixed. A promise without implementation eventually becomes another speech.

The President said visible policing in Ekurhuleni has been significantly increased, but even he acknowledged that the country cannot simply police its way out or arrest its way out of gender-based violence. Prevention has to happen before a woman is murdered.

He also said no woman should have to calculate where she can walk, what time she can travel, what she can wear, whom she can trust, or whether saying no could put her life in danger. That should not need to be a presidential speech. It should be the reality of being a woman in South Africa. Seven years after government first stood before the nation to confront this crisis, women should not still be asked to wait for change. They should be able to see it, because South African women do not need another reason to be angry. They need a reason to feel safe.

By Dikeledi Ramabula