#shutdown sa

There’s this line I keep hearing - “Nika labafana ikhekhe labo. Balambile.” Translated: Give these boys their cake. They’re hungry.

It didn’t start as a song. It began as a chant, an MC hyping up the crowd, playing with rhythm and response.

Now they’ve added a beat to it and it’s becoming more popular. It’s catchy, I won’t lie, especially the, “Nika nika nika nika,” part.

But every time I hear it, something in me pulls back because I know what it means. And maybe it’s the survivor in me (or maybe it’s just the woman in me) but I can’t dance to the idea that women owe anyone their “cake.” Because when you grow up in South Africa AKA the 🍇 capital of the world, you learn early that music, laughter, and danger sometimes dance together. What sounds like fun often carries the echo of entitlement - the idea that men’s desire is hunger, and women’s bodies are the meal. We laugh, we dance, we sing along… until the words sink deeper than the beat.

That tension doesn’t just live in songs. It finds its way into intimacy too.

I once had an ex who would ask during sex, “Whose p*$$¥ is this?” - as if pleasure had to come with possession. I remember always saying, “It’s mine,” not to challenge him, but to hold on to something that was already mine. It wasn’t rebellion, really. It was protection because even in play, words matter. For me, words alway matter. As a survivor of sexual abuse, that small moment of claiming myself back, even in bed, felt like survival in motion.

When you’ve survived what I’ve survived, you hear everything differently, even the things that make people dance. You start to notice how easily ownership slips into affection. How quickly control hides inside desire.

Maybe that’s why this chant-turned-song unsettles me so much. It’s a mirror of the everyday - the casual ways we teach boys that wanting means deserving, and teach girls that giving in is part of the game.

But I still love music. I still love our rhythms, our language, our joy. I don’t want to stop dancing - I just want to dance consciously, to rhythms that honour women, not reduce them. To beats that celebrate pleasure without feeding power. To live in a country where pleasure and respect can share the same beat.

Because reclaiming my body doesn’t mean rejecting pleasure. It means defining it for myself. It means saying: my body isn’t your hunger to feed. My voice isn’t background noise. It means that when I move, when I sing, when I love - every word, every beat, every breath is mine.

And that’s why, on the 21st of November, I’ll be joining the National Women’s Shutdown initiated by Women for Change. A day where we stop working, spending, moving - to show what this country looks like without women’s labour, without women’s presence. A day to say we’re done being reduced to hunger, to silence, to background noise. Changing your profile picture purple is the first step.

A day to remind this nation that without women, it stops.

On the 21st of November, we stop.

We stop working.

We stop spending.

We stop moving, just for a moment, to show what this country looks like without women.

Because South Africa is bleeding.

Because the numbers aren’t numbers anymore - they’re names, faces, stories we carry in our bones.

Because “enough” stopped being enough a long time ago.

The National Women’s Shutdown isn’t just a protest.

It’s a declaration.

That our bodies are not battlegrounds.

That our absence is power.

That we will not keep feeding a system that starves us of safety, dignity, and peace.

So wear black.

Stand still for fifteen minutes at noon.

Lie down if you can.

Withdraw your labour, your spending, your silence.

And if you care (even from afar) change your profile picture to purple.

It’s the first step, a small act that says: I see you. I stand with you.

Please also sign the petition by Women For Change calling for gender-based violence and femicide to be declared a national disaster.

Let the country, and the world, feel the weight of our stillness.