NOXOLO MIYA
Johannesburg - Even after all the public outcries, protests, chants and hashtags on social media platforms, a woman is killed every four hours in South Africa.
According to the human rights organisation, Centre for Constitutional Rights, the femicide rate in South Africa is five times the global average.
Last week, at a second Presidential Summit on gender-based violence and femicide in Midrand, Johannesburg, President Cyril Ramaphosa said murders of women jumped by 50% this year and one in eight women are murdered by men in South Africa.
Although we may never know the name, faces and stories of all of them, one question that comes to mind is: Why are men killing women?
In a report on gender-related killing of women and girls, the UN agency says: “The conventional understanding conveys the idea that hate crimes against women are perpetrated by men simply because of the gender roles assigned to women.”
This is a similar definition used by South Africa’s statistical agency, Stats SA: “The intentional killings of females (women or girls) are because they are females.”
Javo Baloi, a spokesperson for the Commission for Gender Equality, said men killed women mostly because they failed to navigate their way around rejection.
Among the key reasons is an embedded inferiority complex that many men suffer from, he said.
Asked if women in South Africa should arm themselves, Alex Smit-Stachowski, an activist and ally in the ANC LGBTQIA subcommittee, said: “What is actually important is education.
“Education aimed at men and teaching your boy child to look after his sister, mother, aunt etc. And there will be no incidents of rape, murder and domestic violence.”
The Star