CEVAWG: A Missed Opportunity for South Africa to Lead Meaningfully on Ending Gender-Based Violence

By: Senamile Madlala

Across Africa, governments have spent decades signing and ratifying treaties promising to protect women from violence. On paper, the continent looks committed: constitutions enshrine equality and dignity, national laws criminalise abuse, and international conventions ratified by African states proclaim zero tolerance for gender-based violence (GBV).

However, women’s lived experiences and statistics paint a more worrisome tale of violence thriving in a system where it seems as if justice remains elusive.

A new Convention: Familiar Flaws

The African Union Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (AU-CEVAWG) was meant to be a bold step forward, a continent-wide commitment to end violence in all its forms. But as feminist legal analysts have pointed out, the Convention, in its current form, is riddled with ambiguities, omissions, and opportunities for regression. ISLA’s Public Reading of the AUCEVAWG revealed troubling weaknesses including vague and inconsistent definitions of “women”, “gender” and “family” that diverge from established human rights frameworks such as the Maputo Protocol and CEDAW. Moreover, the CEVAWG Convention was Silent on key issues such as FGM, marital rape and child marriages; issues that are imperative and should always be highlighted. Also, very little State obligations are stated allowing for loopholes through reservations and sidestep rights they have supposedly endorsed.

The Despite some of the strongest gender rights provisions globally, South Africa remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman.

Reality for Women in South Africa

South Africa faces a persistent epidemic of gender-based violence (GBV), despite efforts to address it. According to a South African National Gender-Based Violence Study done, while overall violent crime in South Africa decreased in the second quarter of 2024, gender-based violence (GBV) crimes increased. Between July and September 2024, 957 women were murdered, 1 567 survived attempted murders and 14 366 experienced assaults resulting in grievous bodily harm. In addition, 10 191 rapes were reported.

In South Africa, there has rarely been the absence of law, it is the failure to make the laws actually work. The recently developed National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF Plan) and the newly enacted National Council on GBV and Femicide Act looks like progress; however civil society has criticised it and called it “toothless” and “unenforceable”. Civil society and feminist activists in South Africa have grown increasingly frustrated at the slow and uneven implementation of the government’s GBVF plan. Key criticisms include lack of funding and leadership. President Ramaphosa announced R21 billion over three years for GBVF; an amount even the Treasury deemed insufficient and a promised “emergency” budget of R 1.6 billion (2019) mysteriously went unaccounted for. On paper, South Africa has enough legal mechanisms to address the persistent issues of gender-based violence like the Domestic Violence Act, the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act, the Protection from Harassment Act and various Constitutional rights.

The National Strategic Plan on GBV and Femicide was intended to bring coherence, urgency, and accountability and instead, many of the criticisms of civil society. At the second GBV summit in 2022 civil society groups warned that an inter-ministerial task team was not delivering: departments weren’t sharing data or even submitting progress reports. From the outset, South African feminists have mapped out what a robust GBV response needs. The 2018 #TotalShutdown march, for example, demanded a comprehensive action plan, strong oversight (including an independent ombuds or council), trauma-informed support services, and inclusion of all women and gender-diverse people (trans and non-binary).

NGO reports emphasize that without a fully empowered National Council, there is no single body holding the entire plan to account. The Sonke Gender Justice think tank notes that the Council Act finally created a statutory board for GBVF coordination however the rollout has been slow and numerous concerns remain. Mainly, there is a worry that very little will change in the lives of survivors. In May 2024 President Ramaphosa signed the National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Act. This new law was meant to establish a permanent GBVF Council which is supposed to be a multi-sector board charged with driving the NSP and holding government accountable.

South Africa’s leadership in drafting the CEVAWG should have been an opportunity to translate rhetoric into tangible protection. Instead, the country’s GBV crisis shows why a weak regional instrument won’t fix what South Africa already fails to deliver: commitments on paper plus contested institutions, underfunded programmes, and fragmented enforcement equals continued impunity and dead women. CEVAWG could have been the benchmark South Africa needed to push for enforceable standards across the continent.

New Treaty with Old Problems is not the Solution

The weaknesses of the AUCEVAWG reflect South Africa’s own struggles. Both seem to approach commitment as the same thing as implementation. First, the CEVAWG must be strengthened before ratification. Civil society is right to call for a pause: to close definitional gaps, align with the Maputo Protocol and CEDAW, and remove clauses that allow reservations. Feminist lawyers must continue to push for clarity, enforceability, and accountability.

The CEVAWG is a potentially historic instrument, but form without function will not protect women. A continental text that leaves definitional gaps, welcomes reservations, or lacks enforcement architecture offers little help to survivors in South Africa, a country that already struggles to turn robust policies and domestic laws into concrete protection.