A hiker adds a stone to a cairn above Cape Town city as part of a closing ritual to symbolise leaving behind something painful and carrying forward something meaningful. Photo: Laney Van Wyk
- Every day in October, a group of Cape Town residents walked to King’s Blockhouse to raise money for survivors of gender-based violence.
- Once a week, survivors and staff from the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children joined them.
- The event, Blocktober, has raised about R550,000 since 2023. The funds help pay for an entrepreneurship manager at the centre.
Every day in October, a group of Cape Town residents walked to the King’s Blockhouse under Devil’s Peak to raise funds for survivors of gender-based violence.
Every weekend, the hikers would be joined by clients of the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children. GroundUp attended the last weekly hike on Saturday.
The Blocktober event encourages participants to move for 31 consecutive days, be it through walking, running, cycling or swimming.
Jean du Plessis, who started Blocktober in 2020, said the activity is to show solidarity with survivors who do not get a “day off” from carrying their trauma. The funds raised go to the Saartjie Baartman Centre. About R550,000 was raised between 2023 and 2025, and the goal is to raise another R500,000 over the next three years. The funds help to pay for an entrepreneurship manager at the centre.
Lala Steyn has participated in Blocktober since it began.
“We do the walks and the rides and the swims in solidarity with survivors and for ourselves. Many of us are also survivors and we find it like lightweight therapy,” she said.
“When you walk with people, you tend to walk in rhythm with them, and you’re all walking in the same direction,” said Janet Purcell, who attended Saturday’s hike.
She said walking facilitates hard conversations. People join for different reasons. Some stay in the group because they don’t feel safe on the mountain alone. Others are driven by anger after recent killings. Between July and September 2026, the bodies of multiple women were discovered in the broader Ekurhuleni region, sparking a national outcry about South Africa’s gender-based violence crisis.
The latest police statistics show that an average of 127 sexual offences were reported every day between April and June, most of them rape. The South African Medical Research Council has found that the rate at which women are killed by their partners is almost five times the global average.
Siba, a staff member from the Saartjie Baartman Centre who asked that GroundUp only use her first name due to the sensitivity of her work, said many women at the centre have never hiked before.
Siba has been joining the hikes since 2023, and often brings survivors and staff.
“Most of the survivors are stuck in one place. Whenever they come out, they feel free,” said Siba.
Marthe Muller, who attended Saturday’s hike, is the chief operating officer of South African Women in Dialogue. She said she often refers clients to the Saartjie Baartman Centre.
“This month, one of them just got a job after being in a shelter for a whole year, going through really difficult times because she left a difficult situation,” Muller said.
At the end of the hike, Purcell led the group in an exercise to commemorate the end of Blocktober 2026.
Inspired by Desmond and Mpho Tutu’s book on forgiveness, Purcell invited survivors and supporters to carry a small stone with them up to the King’s Blockhouse. Once there, she led them in placing the stones in a pile to symbolise leaving behind something painful and carrying forward something meaningful.
“Part of the point of the ritual is a way to mark the occasion,” Purcell said. “We come from really different walks of life here, and just to acknowledge that we’re in this together.”
About 30 Cape Town residents participated in Saturday’s hike to the King’s Blockhouse, the last of Blocktober 2026. Photo: Alice Scott
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