Ilitha Labantu

Ilitha Labantu and Community Cohesion hosted the W17 Network Meeting at Bertha Spaces in Mowbray, Cape Town, bringing together organisations and stakeholders working across the gender-based violence response sector to strengthen collaboration and coordination.

The meeting provided a platform for partners to share organisational updates, review referral pathways and discuss key issues affecting the GBV response sector. It also created an opportunity for organisations to strengthen relationships, share experiences and identify opportunities for improving coordination and support for survivors.

The discussions highlighted the importance of maintaining strong networks and effective referral pathways, ensuring that organisations working in the GBV sector are better connected and able to respond to the needs of survivors and communities.

Through the W17 Network, organisations continue to connect, share knowledge and strengthen collective efforts towards a more coordinated and responsive GBV support system.

Ilitha Labantu hosted an Educator Induction Session for educators and SBST leaders in the Metro East District at Isivivana Centre, Khayelitsha, as part of the Safe Schools Leadership Collaborative.

The session provided an opportunity to orient educators and SBST leaders to the Educator Empowerment Hub, consolidate and finalize the training dates, and clarify the focus of the upcoming modules. The participating leaders also shared their experiences and reflected on the challenges they encounter in their respective roles within their schools, providing valuable insight into the realities of supporting educators and learners at school level.

The participating leaders will take the information back to their respective schools to ensure that the broader group of participating educators are informed and prepared for the training programme.

The first Educator Empowerment Hub module, Gender Sensitivity and Trauma-Informed Practice, will take place on 4 and 5 September 2026 at Lookout Hill, Khayelitsha.

The induction marks an important step towards ensuring that the Educator Empowerment Hub responds meaningfully to the realities faced within schools and that participating educators are prepared to engage in the upcoming training programme.

Ilitha Labantu, in partnership with the South African Police Service (SAPS), continued its Community Engagement & GBV Awareness Roadshow today in George, Garden Route District, bringing the final day of the roadshow’s community-based awareness and engagement activities to residents.

The final day began at Thembalethu Police Station and moved through the community, using loud hailing and the distribution of GBV awareness flyers to share information on gender-based violence, prevention, reporting and available support services. Ilitha Labantu’s Psychosocial and Legal Advice Mobile Clinic also formed part of the outreach, bringing support and advice directly into the community.

The engagement concluded at Thembalethu Community Hall, Zone 3, where residents and stakeholders came together for dialogue around GBV and the importance of building safer, more responsive communities.

Today’s engagement brought together the Community Policing Forum (CPF), Neighbourhood Watch, the Association for Persons with Disabilities, Phakamani Makhosikazi, the Zone 3 Councillor, SAPS, the CPF Youth Desk and the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU).

The final day highlighted the value of bringing different community structures together in the fight against GBV. From community safety structures and youth representatives to local leadership, disability organisations and organized labour, each has a role to play in prevention, awareness, reporting and supporting those affected by violence.

As the Garden Route Community Engagement & GBV Awareness Roadshow comes to a close, the message remains clear: ending GBV requires communities to stand together, speak out and take action.

Ilitha Labantu, in partnership with the South African Police Service (SAPS), continued its Community Engagement & GBV Awareness Roadshow today in Pacaltsdorp, Garden Route District, taking GBV awareness and support services directly into the community.

From the starting point in Pacaltsdorp, the roadshow moved through the community with loud hailing and the distribution of GBV awareness flyers, creating opportunities to reach residents with information on gender-based violence, prevention, reporting and available support.

The outreach was further strengthened by Ilitha Labantu’s Psychosocial and Legal Advice Mobile Clinic, providing community members with an accessible point to seek information, support and advice.

The day’s engagement concluded at Eagles Nest Ministries on Olympic Drive, bringing community members and stakeholders together for dialogue and reflection on the realities of GBV and the collective responsibility to address it.

The roadshow was supported by SAPS, the George Municipality Gender Desk, the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU), and representatives of persons with disabilities. Their participation reinforced the importance of ensuring that GBV prevention and response efforts are collaborative and inclusive, particularly in reaching groups whose experiences and needs must form part of the broader conversation.

The Pacaltsdorp engagement forms part of the continued roadshow across the Garden Route District, taking information, support and the call to end GBV directly to communities.

Ilitha Labantu will host an Educator Induction Session for nominated educators from the participating Safe Schools Leadership Collaborative (SSLC) schools in the Metro East District (Khayelitsha), as part of the Metro East leg of the Safe Schools Leadership Collaborative.

The session will introduce educators to the Educator Empowerment Hub training series, designed to strengthen their knowledge, practical skills and capacity to support learners and respond appropriately to concerns affecting their wellbeing and safety. The induction will provide an overview of the key training areas, including Gender Sensitivity & Trauma-Informed Practice, Basic Counselling Skills, Identifying Key Signs of Abuse, and understanding and using referral pathways.

Date: Friday, 14 August 2026
Time: 10:00 – 12:30
Venue: Isivivana Centre, Khayelitsha

The session marks the beginning of a focused training journey aimed at equipping educators with practical tools to strengthen learner support, improve early identification and ensure appropriate referral and response within school environments.

Ilitha Labantu, in partnership with the South African Police Service (SAPS), continued its Community Engagement & GBV Awareness Roadshow today in Dyysselsdorp, Garden Route District, taking the message of GBV awareness and prevention directly into the community.

The roadshow started at Dyysselsdorp Police Station and moved through the community, using loud hailing to raise awareness on gender-based violence, prevention and available support services, while GBV awareness flyers were distributed to community members along the route.

Ilitha Labantu’s Psychosocial and Legal Advice Mobile Clinic was also present, bringing support and information closer to community members and providing an accessible point for psychosocial support and legal advice.

The roadshow concluded at the Dyysselsdorp Community Hall, where community members and stakeholders came together for further engagement and discussion on gender-based violence.

The engagement brought together SAPS, the Community Policing Forum (CPF), FAMSA, the Department of Health, church representatives and Mission of Love, reflecting the importance of collaboration between communities, law enforcement, service providers and local structures in strengthening the response to GBV.

As the roadshow continues across communities, Ilitha Labantu remains committed to taking GBV awareness into communities, strengthening access to support and ensuring that information and services are brought closer to those who need them.

Ilitha Labantu, in partnership with the Garden Route District SAPS, continued the Community Engagement & GBV Awareness Roadshow today in Knysna, bringing community members and key stakeholders together to strengthen awareness of gender-based violence and improve access to essential support services.

The engagement brought together SAPS, FAMSA, the Department of Social Development, Correctional Services, the Community Policing Forum (CPF), SANParks and Epilepsy South Africa, creating an important platform for information-sharing, community dialogue and strengthened referral pathways. GBV awareness flyers were distributed to community members, while the loud-hailing van helped amplify key messages and information on available support services across the community.

Through Ilitha Labantu's Mobile Psychosocial and Legal Support Clinic, community members were able to access psychosocial and legal support and connect with relevant services available within the community.

The roadshow commenced at Knysna Police Station and concluded at the SAFE Hub in White Location, bringing information, services and support closer to the community.

The Knysna engagement forms part of the five-day roadshow across the Garden Route District, following the GBV Capacity Building Programme delivered by Ilitha Labantu to members of the Garden Route District SAPS.

Ilitha Labantu, in partnership with the South African Police Service (SAPS), hosted a Community Engagement & GBV Awareness Roadshow in Plettenberg Bay, Garden Route District, aimed at raising awareness to end Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and connecting community members with essential support services.

The programme commenced with a motorcade from Plettenberg Bay Police Station, travelling through various communities as part of the awareness drive. Along the route, community members were reached through loud hailing and the distribution of information flyers, sharing key messages on GBV prevention and available support services.

The engagement concluded at a local primary school, where community members had an opportunity to engage with service providers, access information and learn more about available support and referral services.

Key stakeholders included the Department of Social Development (DSD), Community Policing Forum (CPF), Neighbourhood Watch, Shield and other partners and community organisations.

The engagement highlighted the need for continued community-based awareness, stronger referral pathways and coordinated responses to GBV, ensuring that community members know where to turn for support and intervention.

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Ilitha Labantu Calls for Urgent Action to End Violence Against Women as South Africa Marks 70 Years Since the Historic Women’s March

As South Africa marks National Women’s Day and 70 years since the historic Women’s March of 1956, Ilitha Labantu calls for urgent and sustained action to end violence against women.

National Women’s Day must be more than an occasion to remember the women who marched to the Union Buildings. It must compel us to confront the reality that, 70 years later, women and children continue to experience violence and insecurity in their homes, communities and places where they should be able to expect safety and protection.

The continued scale of violence against women demands a response that is urgent, sustained and measurable. Yet the continued absence of reliable national disaggregated data on crimes against women and children raises serious concerns about our ability to fully understand the crisis, determine where interventions are required, allocate resources effectively, measure whether interventions are achieving their intended outcomes and hold institutions accountable.

Data is not simply a statistical exercise. It is fundamental to understanding the nature and extent of a crisis and determining whether the systems established to address it are actually working. If government is serious about eradicating violence against women and children, the country must be able to consistently account for that violence.

How do we properly understand the scale of the crisis if we cannot consistently account for the women and children affected by it? How do we determine whether interventions are working? How do we know whether resources are reaching those who need them most? And how do we hold institutions accountable when the information required to measure their performance is not consistently available?

South Africa has demonstrated its ability to collect, analyse and publish complex information during periods of national emergency. The absence of a consistently updated national picture of violence against women and children therefore raises serious questions about the priority being given to this crisis.

This concern becomes even more significant when considered alongside the laws, policies and structures established to address gender-based violence and femicide. South Africa has a legislative and policy framework intended to protect women and children and strengthen the national response to GBVF. The National Strategic Plan on GBVF was adopted in 2020, while the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Act was signed into law in 2024.

The question is therefore not simply whether frameworks exist. The question is whether they are functioning as intended.

Are our legislative frameworks being effectively implemented? Are the institutions responsible for protecting women and children adequately resourced and equipped? Are survivors receiving the protection and support they require? Are cases of gender-based violence being effectively investigated and prosecuted? Are perpetrators being held accountable? And where systems fail, are we taking the necessary steps to understand why they failed and prevent those failures from recurring?

The delays in establishing the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide further demonstrate the gap that can exist between government commitments and implementation. The establishment of a statutory coordinating body was first committed to following the 2018 Presidential Summit on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide. Yet it took years for the legislative process to be completed and for the process of appointing the Council’s leadership to conclude.

This timeline is difficult to reconcile with repeated declarations that gender-based violence and femicide constitute a national crisis requiring urgent action.

For years, South Africa has seen summits, declarations, strategies, legislative processes and announcements. We have heard repeated commitments to strengthening the national response to GBVF. The question that must now be asked is whether these commitments have translated into the urgency, political will and institutional action that this crisis demands.

There is a growing concern that government can become more focused on demonstrating that something is being done than on ensuring that what is being done is effectively implemented and produces the intended outcomes.

The establishment of structures, adoption of legislation and announcement of initiatives cannot become ends in themselves. They must result in functioning institutions, adequate resources, effective coordination, meaningful accountability and measurable improvements in the lives of women and children.

What does it say about our national response when structures intended to address one of the country’s most persistent crises take years to become operational? What does it say when women and children continue to experience violence while the urgency reflected in government commitments is not always matched by the pace of implementation? For Ilitha Labantu, this is fundamentally a question of political will.

If government genuinely recognises GBVF as one of the most serious challenges facing South Africa, then that seriousness must be reflected in the speed, resources and determination with which commitments are implemented.

Women and children cannot be protected by declarations alone. They cannot be protected by legislation that takes years to translate into functioning institutions. They cannot be protected by structures that exist without the resources and capacity required to fulfil their mandates.

The country does not need government to simply appear to be doing something about GBVF. We need government to demonstrate, through action, that it is serious about ending the violence.

This must also extend to the criminal justice system. Survivors should not have to navigate systems that further compound the trauma they have already experienced. Police services must have the skills, resources and capacity to respond appropriately to cases of GBV and femicide. Investigations must be effectively conducted, evidence properly handled, cases appropriately prepared and prosecuted, and perpetrators held accountable.

Where cases fail to progress or do not result in justice, the reasons for those failures must be properly interrogated. Where there are shortcomings in investigations, prosecution, forensic services or the treatment of survivors, corrective action must follow.

Accountability cannot end when a crime is reported. It must extend throughout the criminal justice process.

At the same time, addressing violence against women and children cannot be limited to what happens after a woman or child has been killed, r***d or assaulted. A meaningful response must extend beyond reactionary approaches.

Prevention must begin before violence occurs through sustained work with children, young people, families, schools and communities to challenge attitudes, behaviours and social norms that perpetuate violence and discrimination against women and girls.

This requires accessible psychosocial support, effective referral pathways, comprehensive support for survivors and coordinated action between government, civil society, law enforcement, schools and communities.

Government must also recognise the critical role played by civil society organisations working on the frontline. These organisations provide essential services to survivors and communities, conduct prevention programmes, strengthen referral systems and respond to violence where it occurs.

They require sustainable and adequate support to continue this work. Responsibility for addressing this crisis cannot be shifted to civil society while government structures remain inadequately implemented or resourced.

We must also reflect on the kind of activism and collective action required to address this crisis.

Activism cannot be confined to commemorative periods, public statements or moments of national outrage. It requires sustained community mobilisation, challenging harmful attitudes and behaviours, supporting survivors, strengthening prevention and demanding accountability from institutions.

It also requires ensuring that the voices and experiences of women and communities affected by violence remain central to the national response.

We must therefore ask ourselves, as a country, whether we are doing everything within our power to eradicate this scourge.

This is not simply a question of policy. It is not simply a question of administration. It is a moral question.

At what point do we acknowledge that the continued prevalence of violence against women and girls represents a failure of our collective responsibility to protect their dignity, their rights and their lives?

We cannot hope to make meaningful progress as a nation while violence against women and girls persists. We cannot speak meaningfully about equality, development, justice and social progress while women and girls continue to experience violence in their homes, communities and public spaces, while survivors encounter barriers to justice and while perpetrators are not consistently held accountable.

The advancement of women is inseparable from the advancement of society. The safety, dignity and rights of women and girls must therefore be regarded as fundamental measures of the progress we are making as a country.

It is within this context that the 70th anniversary of the Women’s March of 1956 takes on particular significance.

The women who marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 stood against the pass laws and the broader system of apartheid that sought to oppress, control and discriminate against the majority of South Africans. Their struggle was not limited to the rights of women. It formed part of the broader struggle against a system that denied people justice, equality, dignity and freedom.

The women of 1956 laid a foundation upon which subsequent generations have had a responsibility to build.

Seventy years later, we have a democratic Constitution and legislative frameworks that recognise and protect rights that women of 1956 were denied. We have made significant progress. But progress cannot be measured only by what is contained in our Constitution, legislation and policy documents.

We must also look at what women and girls experience in their everyday lives.

Are they safe? Are their rights protected? Are survivors receiving justice? Are perpetrators being held accountable? Are our institutions functioning as they should? Are we doing everything within our power to ensure that violence against women and children is eradicated?

These are questions that cannot only be asked during National Women’s Day or Women’s Month. They must inform our national response every day of the year.

For Ilitha Labantu, honouring the women of 1956 means recognising the responsibility that their legacy places on us. It means continuing to challenge violence against women and children, advocating for stronger prevention and protection mechanisms, supporting survivors and demanding accountability from institutions entrusted with their safety and access to justice.

It means ensuring that the rights and dignity of women and girls do not remain confined to legislation and policy, but are translated into meaningful action and lived reality.

Ilitha Labantu therefore calls on government to move beyond declarations, commitments and structures that merely create the appearance of action. South Africa needs urgent implementation, adequate resourcing, reliable disaggregated data, functioning institutions, effective access to justice, accountability and sustained prevention interventions.

The women of 1956 laid a foundation for justice, equality and freedom. Seventy years later, our responsibility is to build on that foundation by ensuring that women and girls are not only afforded rights in writing, but are able to live with dignity, safety and freedom from violence.

For Media Enquiries:
Siyabulela Monakali
Communications Manager
Ilitha Labantu
[email protected]

Ilitha Labantu Calls for Urgent Action to End Violence Against Women and Children

As South Africa marks National Women’s Day and 70 years since the historic Women’s March of 1956, Ilitha Labantu calls for urgent and sustained action to end violence against women and children.

National Women’s Day must be more than remembering the women who marched to the Union Buildings. It must compel us to confront the reality that, 70 years later, women and children continue to face violence and insecurity in homes, communities and places where they should be safe.

The continued violence against women and children demands a response that is urgent, sustained and measurable. Yet, since the release of the fourth-quarter crime statistics in May 2025, national disaggregated data on crimes against women and children has not been made available. This raises serious concerns about our ability to understand the crisis, direct resources, measure whether interventions are working and hold institutions accountable.

South Africa has laws, policies and structures to address gender-based violence and femicide. The challenge is ensuring these commitments translate into functioning institutions, adequate resources, effective investigations, access to justice and meaningful accountability. For Ilitha Labantu, this is fundamentally a question of political will.

A meaningful response must extend beyond reactionary approaches. Prevention must begin before violence occurs through sustained work with families and communities, alongside accessible psychosocial support and comprehensive support for survivors and those at risk of violence.

Civil society organisations on the frontline must also receive sustainable support. Responsibility for addressing this crisis cannot be shifted to civil society while government structures remain inadequately implemented or resourced.

Seventy years after the women of 1956 marched for justice, equality and freedom, we must ask whether women and girls are truly experiencing the dignity, safety and freedom our democracy and Constitution promise.

Honouring their legacy requires more than remembering their courage. It requires us to act.