In 2020, following years of organising, advocacy, and public pressure from civil society, survivor activists, and communities, the South African government adopted the National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide. The plan established a shared framework to prevent violence, support survivors, strengthen accountability, and coordinate action across government and society.

Its adoption marked an important milestone for the movement that had kept gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) on the national agenda and pressed for a response equal to the scale of the crisis. The plan affirmed that GBVF could not be addressed through isolated programmes or by the criminal justice system alone. Progress would require responses spanning prevention, protection, care, justice, economic participation, research, and accountability.

Six years later, South Africa has a stronger platform for action. The government has committed funding to GBVF-related interventions, and private-sector actors have contributed additional resources. Public services and programmes are operating across the country. Civil society organisations provide essential services and develop approaches grounded in the realities of survivors and communities. Quarterly police statistics, while limited by underreporting, provide a means of tracking incidence over time.

Yet, the prevalence of GBVF remains unacceptably high. The Human Sciences Research Council’s First South African National Gender-Based Violence Study, 2022 found that 35.5 percent of women aged 18 and older had experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime, which translates into an estimated 7.8 million women.

Many women and girls remain unsafe, and survivors’ experiences of services and the justice system vary significantly depending on where they live and which institutions they encounter. Some survivors receive timely, compassionate, and coordinated support; others experience delays in case progression, secondary victimisation, inconsistent service quality, and barriers to justice. Referral pathways amongst police, healthcare facilities, shelters, legal services, and psychosocial support providers are often difficult to navigate. In rural and underserved areas, services may be particularly limited or hard to reach.

Where can funders help accelerate the implementation of the National Strategic Plan and close these gaps? Our research points to several opportunities.

Renewing the Plan for Action

The Bridgespan Group’s analysis of the South African GBVF field, funded by The DG Murray Trust, drew on both primary and secondary research. We interviewed civil society organisations, researchers, funders, and practitioners working across prevention, response, and advocacy. We also reviewed academic literature, national datasets, government policy documents, and funding analyses. This mixed-method approach provided both a systems-level view of how policy, funding, evidence, and institutions fit together and an on-the-ground perspective on how the field functions in practice.

Our research found a field with considerable strengths, including a widely recognised national policy framework; experienced civil society and community-based organisations with deep knowledge of the issue; public institutions and frontline services that can serve as the foundation for a more comprehensive response; a growing body of research and practice-based evidence; and funders across government, business, and philanthropy who recognise the urgency of the issue.

These matter. They mean that future investment need not create an entirely new response. Rather, it can help existing actors improve implementation, extend effective approaches, strengthen coordination, and close persistent gaps in access and quality. We also found opportunities that focus not only on expanding individual programmes but also on creating the conditions that allow those programmes to work together and deliver results at scale.

Funding Commitments – and an Opportunity to Increase Their Impact

The funding landscape reflects both the scale of South Africa’s commitment and the opportunity to improve implementation. Government remains the largest funder of GBVF-related work. Following the launch of the National Strategic Plan, it committed R57.2 billion towards GBVF-related interventions. (However, as of February 2025, only 58.7 percent of allocated funding had reportedly been spent.)

Private-sector actors have also stepped in, pledging approximately R128 million to the GBVF Response Fund in 2021, of which more than R100 million was received by the end of 2022. International private philanthropy has played a more limited role. Bridgespan’s analysis¹ of OECD Private Philanthropy for Development data found that, between 2020 and 2024, approximately 4 percent of international private philanthropy (approximately R641 million) to South Africa was directed to GBVF-related work.

These commitments have supported an important foundation of services, programmes, and institutions. Think of the Thuthuzela Care Centres, specialised sexual offences courts, school-based prevention programmes, and community-level initiatives already in place. Yet for philanthropic funders, there remains an opportunity to complement public and private investment, and help existing commitments translate into better, more consistent outcomes.

What Funders Can Do

No single funder or intervention can solve the GBVF crisis alone. Survivors need high-quality response services. Communities need prevention efforts that reduce the likelihood of violence. Public institutions and civil society organisations need the capacity to implement policy and deliver services. The field also needs stronger systems for coordination, evidence, learning, and accountability.

A full-spectrum approach can help funders get clear on the role they are best positioned to play, how that role connects to the broader field, and whether their funding strengthens the conditions needed for lasting change. Based on our research and conversations, several opportunities stand out.

Invest closer to communities

Organisations close to communities are well-positioned to understand and respond to these interconnected challenges. Community-based organisations, shelters, and survivor-support organisations are central to South Africa’s GBVF response. They often have trusted relationships, contextual knowledge, and the ability to reach people who may not engage easily with formal systems.

Yet many community-based organisations, shelters, and survivor-support organisations operate with short-term, restricted, and unpredictable funding. This can make it difficult to retain skilled staff, adapt programmes, invest in organisational capacity, and sustain services beyond individual grant cycles. Funders can also support community-based models that integrate prevention, response, referral, and rights awareness. Community needs rarely fit neatly into a single category. A survivor may require healthcare, legal assistance, safe housing, psychosocial support, livelihood assistance, and help navigating public services. Integrated models can make such support more accessible, particularly in rural and underserved areas.

Small community-based organisations won’t solve systemic problems on their own, of course. But they can make an outsized difference, particularly with investment in organisational capacity, staff wellbeing, and connections to wider service and referral networks.

Strengthen the full spectrum of GBVF work

Response services are essential. Survivors must be able to access timely, high-quality, and dignified care and justice. But reducing GBVF also requires sustained investment in prevention and targeting the conditions that allow violence to occur.

Philanthropic investment can also support efforts that address harmful gender and social norms, promote healthy relationships, strengthen parenting and early-childhood interventions, reduce childhood exposure to violence, improve access to mental health support, and address the economic and social conditions that increase vulnerability. Prevention efforts should be evidence-informed, adapted to local contexts, and funded over the long term so that funders can assess the changes in behaviour and conditions that can lead to lasting impact. With policy commitments on GBVF in place, philanthropic capital can help move them from policy to practice. Funders can support implementation capacity, local adaptation, programme delivery tools, and processes that enable communities and civil society organisations to monitor progress.

Build the field conditions for greater impact

South Africa has many organisations and institutions doing valuable work, but their efforts are not always sufficiently connected. Funders can support the connective tissue that helps organisations and institutions align their work, share lessons learned, reduce duplication, strengthen referrals, and track progress. This can include support for civil society-led backbone and coordination functions while national coordination structures continue to mature.

The field also needs stronger knowledge of what works, for whom, under what conditions, and at what cost. This includes evaluating promising models, improving the use of administrative data, documenting implementation lessons, and creating platforms that make evidence accessible and useful to practitioners, policymakers, and funders. Community organisations and frontline practitioners generate valuable knowledge through their work, and funders can help ensure this practice-based evidence informs policy, programme design, and funding decisions.

Finally, funders can align on shared outcomes. Individual grants can support valuable work, but they rarely shift a complex field. Funders can increase their collective impact by coordinating capital, identifying complementary roles, aligning on shared goals, and learning together about what is working and what needs to change.

The Next Phase of South Africa’s GBVF Response

GBVF remains one of the nation’s most urgent challenges. It’s a development issue, not just a criminal justice or survivor-services issue. Violence affects children's wellbeing, physical and mental health, school participation, livelihoods, economic security, community safety, and inequality. Thus, funders working in education, health, economic opportunity, child wellbeing, or community development can assess how gendered violence may be limiting progress towards their existing goals. They can then integrate GBVF considerations into their strategies rather than treating the issue as a separate category.

South Africa has already built many of the components it needs for a stronger response to GBVF. The country’s next challenge is to ensure these components function as a coordinated system that can consistently prevent harm, respond to survivors, learn from evidence, and hold institutions accountable for delivery. That’s what it will take to keep communities safe and to boost South Africa’s development.

Edited by Robyn Porteous