From mass protests against GBVF to political and international scandals, South Africans expressed their fury and demanded accountability in 2025.
South Africans are known to be a very passionate people. We are passionate about sports, music, community, and national pride and identity.
Mzansi can also channel that passion negatively, sharing their views on socio-economic inequality, government corruption, and ongoing social challenges.
Here is a list of four instances of people who angered South Africans in 2025.
Gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF)
The scourge of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) outraged South Africans again in 2025.
South Africa paused at midday on 21 November as thousands of women and community members participated in a coordinated nationwide shutdown to protest GBVF.
The shutdown followed Women for Change’s petition, which gathered more than one million signatures calling for GBVF to be declared a national disaster.
Dressed in black, participants lay down for 15 minutes at 12pm, representing the 15 women killed daily in the country.
ALSO READ: GBVF officially classified a national disaster in South Africa
Tembisa Hospital corruption
Tembisa Hospital has become known for the collapse of medical services and the looting of taxpayers’ money through corrupt tender processes.
The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) said that about R2 billion of taxpayers’ money has been looted in a coordinated manner by syndicates operating at the hospital. The SIU identified at least three syndicates operating at the hospital.
Shortly after SIU’s report, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi distanced himself from a prayer day service at the hospital following public criticism.
In November, DA representatives picketed outside Lesufi’s office, demanding swifter action against those responsible for the looting.
ALSO READ: Late Babita Deokaran’s report on Tembisa Hospital yields results
Nathi Mthethwa’s death
In September, former South African ambassador to France Nathi Mthethwa was found dead after falling from the 22nd floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Paris.
His death came days after KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi alleged at the commission of inquiry into alleged corruption in the highest ranks of the South African Police Service (Saps) that Mthethwa was involved in a corruption scandal from 2011.
Mkhwanazi claimed that Mthethwa had “interfered” in a criminal case against a former police head accused of corruption.
After the ambassador’s death, rumours and outrage swirled that the timing wasn’t accidental and that Mthethwa had been murdered, rather than dying allegedly by suicide.
ALSO READ: Silence and suspicion: Unanswered questions in Nathi Mthethwa’s death
Donald Trump and white genocide claims
The re-election of US President Donald Trump reinvigorated claims of an alleged genocide of white farmers in South Africa.
This is despite official crime statistics not supporting it and the South African government denying the claims.
In a social media post earlier this year, Trump took aim at South Africa’s Expropriation Act, claiming the government is “confiscating land and treating certain classes of people very badly”.
He followed this up with an offer to resettle white farmers – and then any minority persecuted in South Africa – in America as refugees.
Trump’s stance was further inflamed by his relationship with South African-born businessman and former senior advisor Elon Musk.
ALSO READ: ‘For now, we will take a commercial break’ – Presidency shrugs off US G20 snub
In May, users of X asked its chatbot Grok (owned by Musk) why it was obsessed with the alleged white genocide to the point of including it in random interactions. The chatbot said its creators at xAI instructed it to address the topic of white genocide.
Shortly after, Trump ambushed President Cyril Ramaphosa during his visit to the Oval Office at the White House with claims of violence against white farmers and Afrikaners in South Africa.
The US president played videos and gave Ramaphosa stacks of printed articles claiming to document a genocide against white South Africans.
However, some of the images were actually from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the footage claiming to show the graves of more than 1 000 white farmers was taken at a highway connecting Newcastle in KZN to a memorial site.
Ahead of the G20 Summit in South Africa, he called out South Africa again, posting his support for the Afrikaans population, reiterating his belief that the group are facing persecution.
ALSO READ: ‘US-SA relations will improve’
“No US government official will attend as long as these human rights abuses continue. I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida,” the president posted.
The US boycotted the two-day summit. As a result, Pretoria said it would not hand over the G20 presidency to the US chargé d’affaires, Marc D Dillard.
After the summit, Trump said the US didn’t attend because the South African government “refuses to acknowledge or address the horrific human rights abuses endured by Afrikaners.”
The US president then barred South Africa from the G20 Leaders’ Summit in the US in 2026.
