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Inequality is a key theme of the historic first African G20 Leader’s Summit this weekend. South African women bear a double inequality: The face of poverty is that of a woman of colour, and ours is among the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman.

The GOOD Party is the only women-led party in Parliament, and takes gender justice very seriously. Gender inequality and gender injustice are the mother and father of misogyny and homophobia, and the petrol for GBV. That’s why we joined the G20 Women’s Shutdown focus event in Sea Point today. 

South Africa is global ground zero for inequality. Millions of citizens excluded from the economy wake up many mornings not knowing what they will eat. Those who are women and girls wake up with an additional burden. 

They must choose to keep going, to keep moving. Every day, the news hammers home just how unsafe they are. Every 2.5 hours, another South African woman is buried.

Sometimes, perpetrators are arrested. Court processes re-traumatise survivors, who relive their worst memories in their struggle just to be believed. Our justice system keeps asking not, “Did the accused commit the act?” but “Can the victim prove she didn’t consent?”

The burden falls, again and again, on women. Women must survive. Women must do the reporting. Women must do the proving. Women must do the work.

And now, with world leaders arriving for a two-day G20 summit on “economic sustainability,” we must say what should be obvious: there can be no sustainable economy without women.

If women’s lives don’t matter, then neither should the flow of capital. That’s why the Women’s Shutdown was also an economic shutdown: The only language power seems to understand is money.

Violence has seeped into the marrow of everyday life in South Africa, but for women and children, it has spiralled into a national emergency. GOOD has said “enough” before.  Our “Don’t Shut Up Speak Up” campaign has been running since 2022, and today we are saying it again.

We stood with Women For Change in trying to prevent GBV perpetrator Chris Brown from entering the country, we stood with them outside the Union Buildings to demand change, and today we stood with them again, throughout the country.

Last year’s 33.8% increase in the murders of South African women is more than a statistic; it points to a massacre. 

Issued by GOOD National Youth Organiser Kaden Arguile