Update on GBV Commitments Requested

Statement by Samantha Graham-Mare MP – DA Spokesperson on Women, Youth and People with Disabilities:

Today marks one month since President Cyril Ramaphosa stood before the nation and promised decisive action following the brutal serial murders of 12 women in Ekurhuleni. We have now reached the halfway mark on the 60 day deadline for delivery, and South Africans deserve to know whether those promises are being kept and on track.

The DA has written to the President requesting a detailed half-way mark progress report on commitments made before the nation on the 29th of September. These commitments included; a national audit of unresolved murders, rapes, and serious sexual offences against women and children, a funded plan to clear the forensic backlog that has left over 140,000 cases languishing beyond internal timelines, municipal safety audits of broken street lighting, abandoned buildings, and unsafe transit nodes, and a coordinated legislative package to curb alcohol-related violence.

The urgency is not abstract. Gender-based violence costs South Africa an estimated R35 billion every year, a figure that captures only the economic damage but none of the human devastation behind it. Every day that recovery plans for stalled cases remain unimplemented, every day that forensic samples sit untested, and every day that municipalities are not held accountable for hazardous public spaces is a day we pay for in lives.

Various civil society groups have rightly warned that municipal safety audits must be public and that consequences must follow failure. The DA agrees with this. Transparency cannot be optional when the lives of our women and children are at stake.

We call on the President to provide a clear update before the 28 November deadline. The halfway mark is not a moment for silence. It is a moment for accountability, and shared commitment to every woman in the Republic, and survivor of Gender-Based Violence.