As the country mourns the victims of a possible serial murderer in Ekurhuleni, AIDC shows how inadequate funding and years of austerity are failing women in South Africa. Last year, the government found R339 million for VIP services to protect 3 666 politicians, but this year only R43 million was put towards the national body meant to coordinate South Africa’s response to gender-based violence and femicide. State spending on policing in 2025/26 is 1.2% lower than in 2016/17 after accounting for inflation, with spending on the forensic science laboratory falling by 44%.
Following the discovery of multiple murdered women in Ekurhuleni this week, the Minister of Police has said that women need to take extra precautions during this time, such as not travelling alone or exercising outside. As a recent Daily Maverick op-ed has pointed out, this response has been disturbing not only because it places the responsibility on women to avoid becoming victims without speaking to the men who perpetrate these crimes, but also because it downplays historic and structural inaction and policing failures that have allowed the national crisis of gender-based violence (GBV) to continue.
The policing system has continued to fail South African women. According to the Citizen, there were 50 511 gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) cases in the 2025/26 financial year, but only 30 736 resulted in arrests and/or referrals to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) – and referral to the NPA is also no guarantee that perpetrators will be convicted or that criminal proceedings will be instituted. A parliamentary review in 2022/23 found that more than 1-in-4 calls to 10111 are dropped or abandoned, while oversight visits to police stations in the Western Cape found that many do not have any stock of sexual assault evidence kits.
It is critical to highlight the role that the underfunding of our public services has played in the crisis of gender-based violence – not to downplay the contribution of patriarchal attitudes, normalisation of violence or policing incompetence, but to show that the government’s economic policies have made a serious structural contribution to the crisis of GBV.
Years of Austerity
In 2020, the late former Finance Minister Tito Mboweni held up an aloe ferox in parliament as a symbol of resilience that will be required in years to come. Before the year was over, the Treasury put forward a raft of cuts to various public sector department budgets, aiming to cut government spending so as to reverse the growth of national debt. This has had a devastating impact on public services – even though the worst cuts are behind us, there has not been anywhere close to the level of additional funding needed to reverse the damage of the past few years. For those in power, these might seem like acceptable sacrifices to prevent a debt crisis – but those who held up the aloe ferox in parliament are not the people whose calls to 10111 go unanswered, who wait hours for ambulances or police vehicles to respond to their emergencies, or who are being told to avoid leaving their house if they don’t want to be murdered. Working -class women bear the brunt of austerity measures, while also being exposed to greater risk of GBVF due to a lack of basic services and infrastructure in working-class communities.
Budget Cuts and Headcounts
When compared to 2016/17, there has been a real (after inflation) cut of 1.2% to state spending on policing. One of the main ways of implementing austerity has been to target public sector employment: hiring freezes, early retirements and other immense pressure on headcounts in frontline services like policing, healthcare and education. A parliamentary question in 2024 revealed that 10111 policing call centres are severely understaffed, ranging from only 8% of positions filled in Queenstown, Eastern Cape, to 86% in Maitland, Cape Town. Until the reallocation of SAPS members from other departments last year, there were fewer detectives employed than in 2019, with close to 6 000 vacancies – a look at the Estimates of National Expenditure shows that spending on detective services specifically has fallen by 5.1% when compared to 2016, after adjusting for inflation.
Forensic Backlog
DNA testing is critical to not only identify perpetrators of serious crimes and bring justice for victims, but also to identify serial perpetrators, which can prompt early intervention and prevent more people from falling victim. But the SAPS’ ability to process DNA samples is not able to catch up. Back in 2022, the national backlog in DNA testing was said to be 143 000 samples. By the end of the 2025/26 financial year, it was over 200 000.
This is not simply the result of mismanagement, but rather part of the intentional underfunding of the state. In 2016/2017, the state spent around R2.1 billion on the forensic science laboratory. According to the 2026 budget, only R1.8 billion was spent on the laboratory in 2025/26. When taking into account inflation, this is a real cut of 44% between 2016 and 2025/26! Going forward to 2028/29, spending on detective services is expected to increase by a small amount – 2.1% after inflation- but the forensic science laboratory will face another cut in spending of 1.5% after inflation. This is unacceptable, given the growing backlog in DNA testing.
The National Council of GBVF is not empowered to address the scale of the crisis
Following #TotalShutdown protests, the government set up a strategy to resolve the fragmented government response to GBVF in the country and to create a coordinated approach to tackle deep-rooted and systemic issues that underpin GBVF. The National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) was enacted in May 2024, but it has been stripped of accountability mechanisms to sufficiently address the scale of the crisis. This financial year, the National Council has been allocated R43 million, with R136 million in total allocated over the medium term. Government is not prioritising funding to match the scale of the crisis. To put this number in context, a recent parliamentary response revealed that for the 2025/26 financial year, R339 million was allocated to VIP services for 3 666 politicians.
All women in South Africa live in fear for their safety, whether in public or private spaces. According to an article by IOL, there are an estimated 7 million women over the ages of 18 who have experienced physical violence in their lifetime. Yet, the government allocates 8 times as much to the safety of ministers and members of parliament for VIP services as it does to the GBVF council. This is a stark illustration of how funding to prevent GBVF is deprioritised from the national agenda and how the crisis is fueled by the government’s austerity measures.
Enough is Enough
Next month, the Minister of Finance will present the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS). Government cannot keep acknowledging gender-based violence as a national crisis while treating its funding as optional. We demand that National Treasury urgently and transparently allocate the funding required to fully implement a response to GBVF and reverse austerity measures that have gutted the frontline services – the police, courts, forensic labs and health services – that women’s safety and survival depend on.
In the world’s most unequal country, there are better ways to stop the growth of national debt than underfunding the services meant to protect the most vulnerable people in society.
