In a speech at the beginning of 2021, President Cyril Ramaphosa called gender-based violence (GBV) SA’s “second pandemic”. Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, the numbers were already painting a grim picture. Between 2015 and 2020, it’s estimated that seven women were murdered a day.

We know what happened next when the lockdown hit in March 2020. The crisis escalated. Vodacom’s Gender-Based Violence Command Centre saw a 65% increase in calls from women and children confined to their homes during lockdown and in need of urgent help. In fact, the 2021 Human Rights Watch Report highlighted that our country has one of the highest levels of intimate partner violence in the world, with 51% of women enduring untold abuse at the hands of their partners, whom they trust...