Across South Africa and beyond, a wave of purple is sweeping through social media — a digital uprising of solidarity against gender-based violence and femicide.
Thousands of women, joined by allies from across the African continent, are changing their profile pictures to purple as part of the “G20 Women’s Shutdown”, a campaign demanding justice, safety, and national accountability for the lives of women lost.
The campaign, set to culminate in a national day of silence and protest on Friday, November 21, calls on women and members of the LGBTQI+ community to withhold their labor, spending, and presence for one day — a symbolic act to show what society loses when women’s lives are taken for granted.
“On the 21st of November, we are all going to wear all black and turn our profile pictures purple,” an activist said in a viral video viewed millions of times on TikTok and Instagram. “We’re standing for the girls that have been raped, the women assaulted, the mothers killed — enough is enough.”
Until South Africa stops burying a woman every 2.5 hours…
The movement, led by the advocacy group Women For Change, delivers a stark message to both national leaders and the G20 countries currently convening on global growth and progress: there can be no true development in a nation that buries a woman every two and a half hours.
In a statement on its website, Women For Change wrote:
“We call on all women and members of the LGBTQI+ community across South Africa to refrain from all paid and unpaid work in workplaces, universities, and homes, and to spend no money for the entire day. Because until South Africa stops burying a woman every 2.5 hours, the G20 cannot speak of growth and progress.”
The group’s central demand is bold but urgent: that Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) be officially declared a National Disaster — not as a symbolic gesture, but as a state of emergency warranting coordinated policy, funding, and enforcement across government institutions.
A Digital Protest With Deep Roots
The purple profile pictures now flooding social timelines have become more than just a show of solidarity — they represent grief, defiance, and unity.
In South African culture, purple has long been associated with both mourning and strength. Here, it becomes a visual protest against the epidemic of violence that has persisted despite years of promises and summits.
South Africa’s rates of femicide remain among the highest in the world. The South African Police Service recorded nearly 1,100 women murdered in just the first six months of 2023. Many of these cases involved intimate partners or domestic settings — the very spaces where women should feel safest.
From Johannesburg to Durban, Cape Town to Nairobi, women have joined the digital demonstration, posting purple-filtered portraits alongside captions like “No more names added to the list” and “We stand for those who can no longer speak.”
The Silence That Speaks Volumes
The “G20 Women’s Shutdown” is a reckoning! By asking women to stop working, spending, and even engaging in their usual routines, it forces society to confront an uncomfortable truth: the economy and the home both run on women’s unpaid labor, and yet their safety remains negotiable.
It is a form of resistance that goes beyond hashtags — a modern evolution of the feminist strikes seen in Iceland, Spain, and Mexico, where similar mass actions have led to policy change.
What makes this one particularly potent is its timing: as world leaders gather to discuss growth, African women are demanding that safety itself be recognized as a measure of progress.
As one activist wrote online, “You cannot build a thriving economy on the graves of women.”
A Movement That Won’t Be Silenced
For now, the purple wave continues to spread, one profile at a time. From students to working mothers, from queer activists to survivors of assault, women are uniting across social and geographic divides to demand what should never have been negotiable — the right to live free from violence.
On November 21, the world may fall quieter in sound. But in its silence, a message will thunder: Women are watching. Women are done waiting.
