Harrowing tales of murder, rape, missing children and the burning of intimate partners have had the country on edge for quite some time.
Activist Lisa Vetten, who is also a Mellon Doctoral Fellow, Wits City Institute, University of the Witwatersrand said femicide incidents had been at their lowest in the 2018/19 period since 2015/16.
Vetten said: “The highest figures for gender-based violence were recorded during the 1990s.”
According to the 2018 Crime Against Women in South Africa Report by Statistics SA, between 2000 and 2015, femicide (the murder of women on the basis of their gender) was five times higher in South Africa than the global
average.
However, over the last decade, the country had been rocked by cases such as the brutal murders of Karabo Mokoena, Uyinene Mrwetyana, Reeva Steenkamp, Anene Booysen, Dolly Tshabalala, Aviwe Jam Jam, Charmaine Cannings, Anni Dewani, Ntombekhaya Vokozela, Courtney Pieters, Minentle Lekhatha, Jesse Hess and many others who died at the hands of either their lovers, neighbours, family friends or grandparents’ jilted lovers.
Though many of the cases have been closed, many hang in the
balance.
In September this year, after weeks of protests by women of all ages, President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed Parliament at a joint sitting where he said there is a “dark and heavy shadow across our land”.
Ramaphosa went on to say that “the women and children of this country are under siege”.
He was met with little resistance when he outlined plans to help curb the scourge of gender-based violence across the country.
“While it has its own specific causes and features, gender-based violence reflects a broader crisis of violence in our society. Now is the time for all political parties to place violence against women at the centre of their concerns,” he
said.