OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

24 September 2026

RE: #TheTotalShutdown 24 Demands, the National Strategic Plan on GBVF and the State of Gender-Based Violence and Femicide in South Africa

Dear President Ramaphosa,

We write to you as #TheTotalShutdown Women’s Movement against GBVF, eight years after womEn and gender non-conforming people across South Africa took to the streets on 1 August 2018 and delivered 24 demands to the State.

Those demands represented years of frustration, organising and advocacy by women who had repeatedly
experienced the failure of institutions intended to protect them. They were not presented as abstract aspirations.

They were a call for specific action from the State to prevent gender-based violence against women (GBVAW), strengthen accountability, transform the criminal justice response, support survivors, and address the structural conditions that enable violence…