Women for Change Shutdown

I wasn't sure whether I'd find the group I was looking for at the Johannesburg Botanical gardens yesterday morning - hoping there might be a dozen or so figures gathered somewhere, dressed in black and purple as was I - but as I got closer to the park, I felt quite emotional to see people arriving from all directions in their hundreds. 

This just one of many gathering points around the country to support the nationwide shutdown and protest against Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, and Women for Change's demand that the awful scourge of violence in this country be declared a National Disaster... which indeed it was later, right on the eve of the G20 summit talks.

After some speeches and singing (Senzenina meaning 'what have we done?') we were asked to lie down while many names of victims of domestic and gender-based violence were read out, another moving fifteen minutes - and difficult to draw at that angle, so I finished it at home. 

There is much to say about this, but this day was surely a turning point, I really hope so.