The killings of nine women in Ekurhuleni have shaken a country long accustomed to confronting violence against women, but advocates say the latest horror should not simply prompt another round of calls for women to protect themselves.
Instead, they say, the murders have exposed a deeper failure: a criminal justice and support system that has laws, policies and institutions designed to respond to gender-based violence but continues to struggle to prevent violence, investigate cases, prosecute perpetrators and adequately support survivors.
Nine women’s bodies have been found in Ekurhuleni since July, with police investigating possible links between some of the cases while cautioning that it is too early to conclude that they were all committed by the same perpetrator.
The latest victim, Jabulile Ntimba, was found in Dawn Park on September 17. Two women appeared in the Boksburg Magistrate’s Court on Monday in connection with her murder and face charges of murder and defeating the ends of justice.
Their case was postponed to October 1 for a bail application, while a man who was initially arrested alongside them was released without being charged because there was insufficient evidence to proceed against him.
The investigation has unfolded alongside the discovery of a 10th woman’s body also in Gauteng. An unidentified woman, believed to be in her 20s, was found wrapped in a duvet in a dam in Moroka, Soweto, on Sunday. Police have opened an inquest and have not indicated any link between her death and the Ekurhuleni cases.
For those working on the frontline of the gender-based violence crisis, the killings are not an isolated rupture but another manifestation of a violence that has become deeply embedded in everyday life.
Advocate Bernadine Bachar, a National Shelter Movement of South Africa board member and director of the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children, said the response could not become another exercise in placing the burden of safety on women.
“The onus should not be lying on South African women to keep themselves safe at all. The onus cannot shift. The idea is insulting.”
Government departments tasked with protecting the public should be doing their work, she said, while the police should be adequately trained and resourced to provide visible policing, arrest people who break the law and ensure that cases reach prosecution.
The impact of the violence extended beyond individual attacks, Bachar said, with women routinely assessing threats and their safety in public and private spaces.
“Women are constantly looking over their shoulder, they are constantly assessing threats, they are constantly on a high alert, they are constantly hyper vigilant, they are constantly looking to see whether they are safe.”
Bachar said the state had failed on multiple fronts, including the implementation of legislation, the processing of forensic evidence, prosecutions and sentencing, as well as the resourcing of shelters and organisations supporting survivors of gender-based violence.
She said forensic kits could take months to process, while shelters and NGOs were being left to provide services that should be adequately supported by the state.
“This has a ripple effect across the system, resourcing is paramount to be able to protect survivors of gender-based violence and also to prevent violence against women,” she said.
Princess Eurika Mogane, a commissioner at the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE), said the sequence of killings had shaken South Africans into confronting a level of violence that had become normalised.
“South Africa was not shocked … they were just shaken to the reality,” she said, adding that the country had become “so numb” to violence that people could pass someone lying in the street without stopping to ask whether they needed help.
The concern is reflected in police statistics. In Mpumalanga alone, 688 rapes were reported between April and June this year, including 332 involving children.
Mogane said the figures did not capture violence that was never reported or cases that were withdrawn, which was one of the issues the commission was examining.
The CGE, together with the South African Human Rights Commission and the CRL Rights Commission, launched a joint inquiry in July into the reporting, victim support, investigation and pre-trial handling of GBVF cases. The inquiry attracted such a large response that its submission deadline was extended to September 11.
Mogane said the question now was whether the systems in place were being properly implemented.
“We already have policies, frameworks. We already have laws. Can we just implement them?” she said.
Mogane rejected framing the crisis as a conflict between men and women, saying the focus should instead be on perpetrators and the wider society.
“It’s not a man versus woman war. It’s a perpetrator versus the community or versus society war and we need to treat it as such,” she said.
That meant confronting failures across the system rather than focusing only on individual perpetrators, she said.
“We need to be very proactive, bring in all of our resources and address issues as they are. Let’s not hide things, let’s not try to downplay things.”
Mogane said the commission was also concerned about the capacity of the forensic system, particularly DNA processing, which could affect the progress of sexual offence cases through the courts.
“What delays our court systems is the DNA, the forensics,” she said.
The CGE also monitored gender-based violence and femicide cases in court, with commissioners and its legal team observing proceedings and intervening when it believed victims were not being treated in accordance with the law, Mogane said.
“It’s free. The people must know it’s free … We have our own advocate, we have our own lawyers who will stand in for them as well.”
Bachar said the response needed to go beyond another declaration of concern, with the state properly resourcing shelters and NGOs, making policing visible, ensuring perpetrators were charged and prosecuted and strengthening the criminal justice system.
The shelter sector, she said, should not be left to carry out responsibilities that constitutionally belonged to the state without adequate support.
“We, as the gender-based violence sector, are dismayed at finding ourselves yet again in this position where we are saying do all that you can to protect yourself,” she said.
“I want to know what their plan is, when are they going to resource a plan that’s actually going to adequately address the crisis that we find ourselves in now.”