On Friday, 21 November, I stood in a moment I’ll never forget.
At exactly 12:00, across South Africa, women laid down for 15 minutes in silence. Fifteen minutes for the fifteen women who lose their lives to gender-based violence every single day. Fifteen minutes to honour them, to remember them, and to refuse the silence that has swallowed too many of their stories.
I was one of those women.
And being part of the Women for Change Shutdown wasn’t just powerful… it was necessary. In a generation often dismissed as “internet activists,” friday was a reminder that we are more than hashtags. We are more than comments, retweets, shares, likes and reposts. We are not just voices behind screens…we are bodies in the street, marching, chanting, demanding justice.
From Constitutional Hill, across the Nelson Mandela Bridge, past Bree Taxi Rank, we marched. We sang liberation songs until our voices cracked. We cried. We held strangers’ hands. We hugged women whose names we will never know. When the police tried to stop us, we didn’t back down.
I went alone, but I was never alone.
In those crowds I found my sisters, women who carried the same fire, the same grief, the same determination. Women who showed up not because they had to, but because they refused to let silence win. As we walked, talked, laughed, held hands… it felt like finding my people. My community. My fellow fighters.
And as a survivor of abuse, it was something indescribably emotional about seeing so many people stand in solidarity with us, people who may not have experienced violence themselves, but still showed up to say: Enough.
I am proud, deeply proud to have been part of this. To have used my voice. My body. My courage. To have stood up for something that matters. There is a unique kind of power in knowing you did not look away. You did not hide. You showed up.
And I hope that Friday becomes more than a moment.
I hope it sparks real, tangible change, in government, in policy, in communities, in homes, in conversations. I hope it forces South Africa to confront gender-based violence not as a yearly campaign, but as an urgent national crisis.
Friday 21 November 2025 was a beginning. A promise. A reminder.
We will not be silent.
We will not be still.
We will not stop demanding change.
I was there.
And I will keep showing up.
Xoxo
Nirvana