Purple Gaze

I'm slipping into this void and I can't seem to hold myself up. There is slow music playing and white clouds swirling around me. My mouth feels itself forming the words as I speak, and for once, I'm starting to understand. As my lungs pierce through the layers of sheets, I let out a breath.

In my head, the world reveals itself to me. Hopelessness driving out hope and blood stricken hands holding onto the cries of the dead. Dead women and children, and even those living in death. Screams merged with protests and the infinite desires of justice moving and inherited across generations. The past slowly becomes the present and little ever really changes.

As I speak, my lungs lift through the sheets and I speak life to the stories of the dead. They travel with me past time and reveal their last moments - gasping for air, digging in skin, pushing against skin and then sudden darkness.

In my head, I reveal myself to them. Floating in this void and silenced by the ruins of hopelessness. When they hear my story, they refuse to understand. They hold onto their breaths and lay gazing at me. How were you silent? How were you breathing? Their rage merges with the swirling white clouds.

As they speak, their lungs lift through the ground and they speak life to the stories of the living dead. They travel with them through time and reveal what life could be with hope, with fight, with voice and breath.

As I slip deeper into this void, I see their purple eyes.

The music is no more and the clouds are nonexistent. How were you silent? How were you breathing? My mouth feels itself forming with their swirling rage.

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Hi there, I've written this piece in solidarity with South Africa's G20 Women's shutdown taking place on the 21st of November 2025.

In a country where women and children are continuously losing their lives to violent crime, the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) has to date rejected Women's for Change's petition - signed by one million South Africans - to declare gender-based violence and femicide a national disaster.

Women for change, a non-profit organisation, has asked South Africans to participate in this movement and this national shutdown through changing their profile pictures to purple, wearing black on the actual day, not spending money/ withdrawing from the economy among other ways.

I wrote this piece for the women and children of this country: for those still fighting to survive, and for those whose lives were stolen.

I wrote it to face my own demons.

I wrote it so we do not forget the rage, the despair, or the names that become hashtags.

I wrote it because this is my way of standing with this movement and refusing to be silent.

If you'd like to participate in this movement wherever you are in the world, you can do the following:

- Go to your social media handles/ accounts and change your profile picture to purple.

- Share other posts that are raising awareness.

- Don't participate in paid or unpaid labour on the 21st of November 2025. And if you can't afford to not work, join the 15-Minute Standstill by lying down at 12pm (SAST) to honour the women who died at the hands of violence.

- For writers, I personally think we could be sharing work or pieces that raise awareness about GBV and femicide. Art has always a powerful tool in movements. Let's write our hearts off.

In all that you do, remember the purple gaze.

Always.