South Africa’s escalating Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) crisis has intensified nationwide calls for the government to declare GBVF a National Disaster. Civil society organisations warn that the country has entered a dangerous period marked by rising murders, widespread sexual violence, and a justice system struggling to protect survivors.

This month alone, Mpumalanga has witnessed a series of deeply disturbing cases: a seven-year-old girl found murdered in Delmas, a 26-year-old Carolina woman whose body was discovered after she went missing, and the arrest of two suspects in Nelspruit for the murder of a 19-year-old woman. These incidents form part of a grim national pattern that advocates say reflects a worsening emergency.