Women For Change says government’s GBVF promises are exhausting activists - IOL
As South Africa reels from the killings of women in Ekurhuleni, Women For Change’s Merlize Jogiat questions whether another set of government promises will bring meaningful change or deepen public exhaustion.
The exhaustion is no longer just about the fear of walking home alone, the grief of burying women killed by violence, or the anxiety of wondering who will be next.
For Women For Change operations manager Merlize Jogiat, it is also about having to listen to the same promises from government while women continue to die.
Following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s latest address to the nation on gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide (GBVF), Jogiat said she had reached a point where even finding the energy to express her frustration had become difficult.
She believes the government’s repeated promises, speeches and failure to answer specific questions have created a sense of exhaustion that risks weakening public resistance to a crisis that continues to devastate women, their families and communities.
“The South African government has used every abusive tactic in the book,” Jogiat said.
“The one that I realised earlier today, they finally used on us, is the ‘drag it out until they're exhausted and they can't do anything about it’.”
Her words come as SA confronts renewed public anger over the killings of women in Ekurhuleni and demands for government to move beyond declarations of concern towards action that can be measured, monitored and felt in the lives of those who fear becoming the next victims.
For Jogiat, the President’s address was not simply another political speech. It was a reminder of how long women’s rights activists have been demanding meaningful intervention, and how emotionally draining it has become to keep returning to the same conversation while the violence continues.
The President addressed the nation on Tuesday. He acknowledged the country’s anger and grief, conceding that existing efforts had not been enough.
But while Ramaphosa announced a new set of measures, Jogiat’s response exposed the frustration of activists who fear that fresh commitments will eventually become another set of promises without sufficient action.
“I'm so tired from the same rhetoric that I'm too tired to say or complain about the fact that it's the same rhetoric,” she said.
She compared the pattern to abusive tactics in which exhaustion is used to wear down a person until they no longer have the energy to resist.
Jogiat argued that repeated speeches, promises that activists believe will not materialise and unanswered questions risk creating precisely that outcome: a public so exhausted by disappointment that it struggles to keep demanding change.
Her comments reflect a deeper concern about the human cost of prolonged inaction.
For women living with the threat of violence, and for families mourning loved ones, the consequences of delayed justice are not abstract political failures. They are lived realities.
Every unresolved murder leaves families waiting for answers.
Every stalled investigation can prolong their grief. And every promise that fails to translate into visible change risks deepening the mistrust between affected communities and the institutions expected to protect them.
Jogiat's concern is that the cycle of announcements and disappointment could leave activists and ordinary South Africans too emotionally depleted to continue demanding accountability.
Her appeal was not simply for people to criticise the President's latest address, but to recognise what she sees as a pattern that can undermine collective resistance.
“If I could list the amount of abusive tactics that we have seen from this government, I think this is starting to be the new effective one,” she said, describing what she views as a decade of repeated speeches and promises.
She urged South Africans to educate themselves about abusive tactics and examine how power operates within the systems that govern their lives.
