Thousands of women, LGBTQI+ community members and anti-gender-based violence activists are expected to gather at Sea Point Promenade in Cape Town and at solidarity events across South Africa on Friday for the G20 Women’s Shutdown, a full-day economic withdrawal organised by NGO Women for Change.
The mass action calls on all women and LGBTQI+ individuals to abstain from paid and unpaid work and to refrain from participating in the economy for the day in protest against South Africa’s extreme levels of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF).
As part of the nationwide demonstration, symbolic lie-down actions will take place in cities and towns from 12:00 to 12:15 to mourn the average 15 women and girls murdered in the country every single day. Participants have been urged to wear black.
Women for Change continues to demand that government officially declare GBVF a national disaster, a call backed by a petition that has already collected more than one million signatures. The organisation handed a separate memorandum to authorities in April 2025 and is using Friday’s shutdown to intensify pressure for significantly increased funding and resources to prevent violence, support survivors and strengthen the criminal justice system. Latest crime statistics underline the urgency of the protest: almost 6,000 women were murdered in the past 12 months, 115 rapes are reported daily, and specialists estimate that only one in 13 sexual offences is ever brought to police attention. Of the cases that are reported, fewer than 10% result in a conviction.
Supporting organisations, including the Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture, emphasise that South African women are forced to live in constant fear and to organise their daily lives around avoiding assault or murder.The G20 Women’s Shutdown is intended not only to disrupt the economy but to spark wider societal conversations about the cultural and systemic issues that allow gender-based violence to continue at crisis levels.