CheckPoint Podcast | GBV In South Africa: Are We Fighting The Problem Or Just Naming It? | 25 September 2026

CheckPoint Podcast | GBV In South Africa: Are We Fighting The Problem Or Just Naming It? | 25 September 2026 Vusi.Bafetane Fri, 09/25/2026 - 16:08

South Africa’s GBV Fight Needs More Than Stronger Language

South Africa does not lack declarations, strategies or institutions to confront gender-based violence. The harder challenge is building a system capable of learning what works, identifying what is failing and changing course accordingly.

Gender-based violence and femicide have now been classified as a national disaster, placing responsibility for coordination at national executive level. But the declaration sits on top of an existing policy architecture. South Africa’s National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, adopted in 2020, already provides a decade-long framework covering prevention, justice, survivor support, accountability and institutional coordination. In July 2026, the President appointed members of the statutory National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, charged with coordinating implementation across national, provincial and local levels.

That means the central public-interest question is no longer simply whether the country recognises the seriousness of GBV. It is whether the institutions tasked with confronting it are learning quickly enough.

Gender-violence researcher Lisa Vetten puts the problem sharply: “We’re very good at counting things.” Her criticism is not of measurement itself, but of stopping there. Numbers should lead to deeper questions about why violence differs across places, whether firearm access is changing patterns of killing, why some interventions appear to have worked previously, and why gains may later be reversed.

A strategy must also be a learning system

Policies fail when implementation becomes a checklist rather than a feedback loop. A functioning national strategy should be able to distinguish between interventions that merely demonstrate activity and those that measurably change behaviour, strengthen protection or reduce harm.

That requires reliable evidence. Here, there is a genuine institutional problem. SAPS acknowledged that it withheld disaggregated 2024/25 crime data relating to women and children after identifying discrepancies, duplicate counts and problems linking demographic information to victims. Police said the figures would be corrected and validated before being reinstated.

The significance extends beyond statistical housekeeping. If government cannot establish a dependable baseline, it becomes harder to determine whether violence is rising or falling, whether one province requires a different intervention from another, or whether money is being directed towards programmes that work.

Prevention has to reach behaviour

Data alone will not prevent violence either. One of the more demanding arguments raised by Vetten is that prevention must engage with how people actually behave in relationships, families and communities.

Possessiveness can be romanticised before it becomes surveillance and control. Families trying to mediate abuse can unintentionally shift responsibility onto a victim. Children exposed to violence may grow up with destructive models of conflict. People who respond impulsively to frustration may need practical skills that teach them to slow down, regulate emotion and choose alternatives to aggression.

These are difficult interventions because they are less visible than campaigns, slogans or declarations. They require sustained work in homes, schools, communities, counselling programmes and institutions. They also resist the comforting idea that one policy instrument can solve a problem produced by many overlapping social conditions.

Accountability means knowing what changed

The National Strategic Plan itself already recognises prevention, accountability and coordinated institutional action as central pillars. The real test, therefore, is not how forcefully South Africa describes the crisis but whether each intervention produces evidence that improves the next decision.

That distinction matters because public attention can easily mistake visibility for progress. Campaigns can mobilise people. Declarations can increase urgency. Institutions can create coordination. But none should become substitutes for demonstrating whether women are becoming safer.

Near the end of the CheckPoint conversation, Vetten describes GBV as a “performative issue” and warns that speaking can become “a substitute for action.”

The challenge now is to turn recognition into a disciplined cycle of evidence, prevention, implementation, measurement and correction. A national disaster declaration may raise the stakes. What ultimately matters is whether the system can show what changed because of it.

References

CheckPoint: The Podcast interview with Lisa Vetten, 24 September 2026.

South African Government: National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide 2020–2030.

South African Government: Classification of GBVF as a national disaster.

The Presidency: Appointment of the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, 31 July 2026.

***Catch up on all CheckPoint Podcast episodes here: ***⁠https://www.enca.com/checkpoint-podcast-0