Source: Government of South Africa
Like a stubborn stain clinging to a cherished garment, violence against women in South Africa continues to blot the nation’s fabric — a deep mark South Africa still struggles to wash away.
While the country has made strides in improving the lives of women, including having women represented in various roles in society, the level of violence against women continues to be of grave concern.
“I may not be able to answer the question of whether we are progressing or regressing, but I do know that we are at a very low end in terms of brokenness in the dignity or indignity with which women and children are being treated in this country at this moment.
“It has gone way beyond a question of criminality and crime,” Deputy Chairperson of the National Planning Commission (NPC), Professor Tinyiko Maluleke, told SAnews, during a recent interview.
As an independent advisory body appointed by the President, the NPC is tasked with advising government and Parliament on matters pertaining to the implementation of the National Development Plan (NDP) Vision 2030.
The Deputy Chairperson said the country has come to a point where one cannot merely say that the police must do their work.
“Of course, the police must do their job. When young mothers are getting involved in the abuse of their own children and fathers are getting involved in the abuse of their own children at the scale at which we are witnessing in this country, there is something much more deeper that is broken. We speak of social cohesion and maybe this is a devastating illustration of the lack of it,” he told SAnews.
Expanding on whether the country has made progress in tackling women’s issues, Maluleke said this was a mixed bag, adding that the establishment of a Ministry of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities (DWYPD) as well as a good number of women in Parliament, were good signs.
He also welcomed the fact that the country has the Gender-Based Violence and Femicide National Strategic Plan (GBVF-NSP) which sets out to provide a cohesive strategic framework to guide the national response to gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF).
“But we are currently confronted with a very worrying situation in which South African society seems to be turning against women. There’s almost a low-intensity war against women. If you look at the numbers of women who are victims of rape and violence, the numbers are simply mind-boggling as to what actually is happening in our country.”
At the release of the fourth quarterly crime statistics for the period 1 January – 31 March 2025, the South African Police Service (SAPS) said that rape cases had increased with Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal contributing 19.1% and 19.9% respectively to the national total.
However, decreases in rape statistics were recorded in the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Limpopo, North West, and the Western Cape.
This as the police acknowledged that gender-based violence and femicide affects all genders, adding that women remain disproportionately affected by rape, assault GBH, and murder
Additionally, a Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) study conducted in 2024 revealed that one in three women in South Africa have experienced physical intimate partner violence in their lifetime. According to the report, between July and September 2024, 957 women were murdered, 1 567 survived attempted murders, and 14 366 were assaulted, resulting in grievous bodily harm. In addition, 10 191 cases of rape were reported during this period.
Maluleke also bemoaned the fact that “we have also become a society that is turning or eating its own children if you like, because children are being sold, raped, killed at very high and abnormal rates.”
“There is something broken in our society when it comes to the relationship between men and women; between society and children; men and children; women and children, because some of the cases indicate that.”
The Professor’s comments come as South Africa is at the tail end of Women’s Month.
In his reflections of Women’s Month, Maluleke said that in South Africa, the face of unemployment and poverty tends to be that of a woman – adding that the elimination of poverty, inequality and employment are the key objectives of the NDP.
“The NDP is not very vocal or very explicit on gender issues in general. It’s not very explicit but to the extent that the NDP is about the elimination of inequality, the ending of poverty and unemployment, it is, at least conscious of the people who are the faces of these problems.”
The commission is the custodian of the NDP.
“The face[s] of unemployment, the face[s] of poverty in this country are women. To that extent, there is an acknowledgement of the problems that affect women but perhaps not enough explicit reference to the broader gender issues that we have come to understand and appreciate very well now. [This] includes violence against women, issues of unequal pay and work that is not regarded as work and therefore unpaid work which tends to be done by women.”
As the country celebrated the 30th anniversary of the first official National Women’s Day on 09 August 2025, Maluleke said it is regrettable that the NDP did not anticipate the levels of violence against women.
“The levels of violence against women have exploded in our faces over the past decade or so and it is indeed regrettable that the NDP could not anticipate this problem to the extent that it has come.
“But I think it is a problem that has since been acknowledged by government and by society at large. There are plans and strategies that have since been developed and that has never been our problem as a country. We don’t lack plans and strategies. We just don’t implement as comprehensibly [and] as constantly as possible,” he explained.
Greater emphasis on women
On whether the NDP of the future will place greater emphasis on women’s issues, he said the existence of the DWYPD is a “massive acknowledgement” and attempt to address the problem.
“The current NDP expires in 2030, and plans are already afoot, certainly conversations have started within the National Planning Commission, about the next plan beyond 2030. I cannot imagine a plan beyond 2030 that does not foreground and not merely include but actually foreground issues such as violence against women and all the issues of inequality between men and women in society that we have come to appreciate so well,” he explained.
He said issues of gender have become as important as issues of race which were perhaps much more foregrounded in the period of the birth of the new democracy.
This as in June, the Commission said it was conducting feminist-led gender-mainstreaming workshops, in search of comprehensive responses to the current fate and state of women and youth.
The workshops were revealing a people “anxious and very concerned with the levels of violence and the continued non-representation of women’s voices at all the levels.”
“Sometimes you have the numbers of women but usually they don’t have roles that are influential or that can change the direction of the country. The question of representativity has now gone beyond numbers. I spoke about the number of women in Parliament but that in itself is not enough. We are beginning to hear voices that are speaking out against the cliché and superficial nature of just numbers. Those are just some of the voices we are hearing.
“We are also realising that class has also become a very important matter in the country. Class in general but also class among and between women is also an issue that needs attention.
“It doesn’t help to have one class of women attempting to represent all classes of women. The same goes for other groups in society. So, intersectionality, inclusion, all of these issues have become much more paramount, and people are beginning to be rather rigorous in discussing them because they want to move beyond the numbers game.”
Asked about the status of women living with disabilities, Maluleke said they are among the most vulnerable in society in terms of inclusivity.
“Certainly, there is room in critical national processes to be more inclusive but also in ordinary day to day engagements and activities.”
Asked what his message to women this month would be, he said: “My message is for the sake of women who marched in 1956. We owe it to them not to give up, but also, we owe it to them to have policies and structures that affirm the dignity of women in this country and their role.
“The message to the women themselves is one of saying thank you. Thank you for your leadership, and thank you for your largely uncelebrated, unremarked but crucial role for the coherence of our society, but also for the economy of this country.
“Women are the backbone of the economy of this country because of the work they do, most of which is not recognised as such. Thank you to the women of the country,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za
