Accelerate Cape Town CEO, Ryan Ravens
FROM THE CEO
An eleventh woman’s body was found in Springs last week. By the time you read this, the number may have changed. That it requires a series of brutal murders to draw attention to the ongoing scourge of GBV in SA, is a tragic indictment of men in this country.
Gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) has been at this level for years. Unfortunately, attention only arrives with the bodies and leaves with the news cycle. If ACT is going to be useful here, we should start by admitting that and committing to do better.
As a community of leaders, we will continue to address issues like toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and gender inequality. As good corporate citizens, we should consider this our daily work – every day until women are safe at work, at home, and in our communities.
Ten months ago, government classified GBVF a national disaster. That changed the language. It has not changed the numbers. Parliament’s own committees are still asking for the funding plan, ring-fenced allocations, targets, and timelines that ten months have not produced.
What business controls is narrower, but it is real. We control what gets tolerated in our organisations, whether our policies survive contact with an actual complaint, and whether men in senior positions say anything at all.
Silence from men in power is not neutral. It is a choice. This week we are making a different one.
More Than Bystanders
Gender-based violence in South Africa is not a distant statistic. Research from the Human Sciences Research Council shows that more than one in three South African women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, most often at the hands of someone they know. It touches homes, families and, inevitably, the workplaces we lead.
GBV is more than a social crisis, it is also an economic one, and one that corporate South Africa cannot afford to sit out of. The World Bank estimates that GBV can cost countries up to 3.7% of GDP through absenteeism, reduced productivity, healthcare costs, and lost workforce participation. No economy and no business reaches its full potential while this goes unaddressed.
For too long, GBV has been framed as a “women’s issue”, something women must guard against, rather than something men must help end. That framing has to shift. The vast majority of perpetrators are men, which means the vast majority of the solution also sits with men: in how we raise our sons, challenge our peers, and hold ourselves and each other accountable, at home and at work.
This is not about guilt. It is about agency. Every business leader in this community has influence – over culture, over what is tolerated in a boardroom or on a factory floor, over what “normal” looks like in their organisation. Silence from men in positions of power is a choice – it is choosing to be a bystander rather than stepping up to help.
As ACT, we believe business leadership carries a responsibility that extends beyond the balance sheet. Modelling accountability, challenging harmful attitudes when we see them, and creating workplaces where every employee is safe are not side issues, they are core to the kind of Western Cape we want to build.
🟣 Question for members: What is one thing you, as a leader, could start doing differently to model accountability on this issue within your own organisation?
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Putting Expertise to Work
When we talk about business leadership tackling gender-based violence, it’s not always about grand gestures. Sometimes it’s about putting the skills a company already has to work where they’re needed most. That’s the approach ACT member Webber Wentzel has taken.
Webber Wentzel provided legal and commercial advice to help establish the Minerals Council South Africa’s Partnership to tackle Gender-Based Violence in Mining Communities. This first-of-its-kind initiative brings together the Minerals Council, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) through its Sexual Offences and Community Affairs Unit, and the GBVF Response Fund. The firm drafted the tripartite Memorandum of Understanding, signed in December 2022, and the work earned the ESG Initiative of the Year Award at the 2023 African Legal Awards.
The partnership, still running today, supports the NPA’s Thuthuzela Care Centres (TCCs), particularly those serving mining communities and labour-sending areas. Mining companies can choose a specific TCC or opportunity to support, with the NPA setting out how that support is delivered.
Webber Wentzel has also backed frontline support directly, donating R100,000 on behalf of clients to Lawyers Against Abuse, an NPO providing free legal and psychosocial support to GBV survivors.
It’s a useful example for members thinking about their own response: legal expertise, procurement decisions and corporate donations can all be redirected toward this fight, not just awareness campaigns.
👀 WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
Following the discovery of the bodies of 11 women across Ekurhuleni since July, Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations will call the Ministers of Social Development and Police to account on whether GBV funding is sufficient and being used effectively. It’s an early test of whether the national disaster classification will translate into real resources and results. Read the full statement here.
NUMBER OF THE WEEK
1.1 million
The number of signatures on the Women For Change petition that helped drive government’s decision to classify GBVF as a national disaster in November 2025 — a reminder of what sustained public pressure, including from business voices, can achieve.
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