How South Africa lost control of its crisis of violence against women

Telegraph

01-04-2025

Blood spattered across his face and breathing heavily, the man films himself trying to calmly justify why he has just stabbed his girlfriend to death.
Sbusiso Lawrence claimed Nontobeko Cele had cheated on him and given birth to another man's child. While speaking, the primary school teacher pans his phone camera to a woman's bloodied body slumped against the front passenger seat of a white car.
Soon after posting his confession to Facebook, Lawrence hanged himself.
The incident just before Christmas provoked shock in South Africa: firstly for the horror of the crime and secondly when so many men on social media seemed to take Lawrence's side.
The killing prompted renewed soul-searching in a country which has made significant progress in cutting the numbers of such murders of women, only to now see the rate rising again.
Overall violence against women also remains notoriously high, and official statistics show that Lawrence's crime was far from isolated.
In the three months from July to September 2024, there were 957 murders of women, and 1,567 attempted murders. There were also high numbers of rapes.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has said there is a 'national crisis' of violence against women, which he once likened to a second pandemic in South Africa.
Prof Rachel Jewkes, executive scientist for research strategy at the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) and a founder member of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI), said: 'We lead the world in terms of the rate of intimate partner femicide (IPF) [where a woman is killed by a current or ex-partner] amongst countries that have reliable data.
'[But] although we have a very high level of femicide, the level was previously higher and actually we have seen quite substantial reductions over the last 20 years.'
Recent research showed that the IPF murder rate fell from 9.5 per 100,000 women in 1999 to 6.6 in 2009. By 2017, it had fallen again to 4.9.
Prof Jewkes said: 'We saw a major impact that was caused, not by individual interventions, but by society wide measures and I think it's really important to emphasise that.'
Those successful measures targeted some of the poverty, lack of female options and societal factors that are often behind the violence.
For example, there was a massive expansion of social grants, so women with children under 18 could apply for a support grant giving them a basic level of economic empowerment. There was also a groundswell of mobilisation against violence against women which may have empowered women to leave violent relationships, Prof Jewkes said.
'A horrible social experiment'
New gun control measures in 2004 and economic growth in the early years of South African democracy are also thought to have helped.
However, the trend has gone into reverse in recent years.
She said: 'What is tragic is that femicide overall seems to have increased by over 30 per cent since March 2021, and I think that has been driven by our terrible economic climate and loss of implementation of gun control.
'Watching what has happened is a horrible social experiment.'
Researchers and activists say that South Africa's example, and years of work elsewhere, have shown that violence against women can be successfully reduced and shown that certain strategies work well.
Last decade, the UK's Department for International Development spent £25m over five years funding research in poorer countries across Africa and Asia to see exactly what worked.
One programme in central Ghana trained local citizens to teach others how to spot violence against women and helped cut sexual violence by 55 per cent and physical violence by half.
Another scheme in Rwanda that taught a 'couples' curriculum', trained up community activists and made shelters for women managed to cut violence by their partners by 55 per cent.
Another study in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) trained up Christian and Muslim clergy to speak out on violence against women from a religious perspective. Over the next year, attacks on women again fell by more than half.
Many of the most successful schemes worked by taking the issue out of the shadows and getting people to talk about it.
'Because at the end of the day it's one of the most powerful ways of bringing about change,' said Prof Jewkes.
Despite the progress that has been made, many of the factors which are linked to violence against women in South Africa are still present, and may have got worse in recent years.
The phenomenon is linked to extreme poverty and South Africa is the most unequal society in the world, with an unemployment rate of 32 per cent, rising to 45 per cent for young people. After growth in the years following the end of apartheid, South Africa's economy stagnated after the 2008 financial crisis and the country was then badly hit by Covid lockdowns.
Added to this, the country has a long history dating back to the apartheid era and beyond of poor black families being broken up by the need to migrate for jobs.
That has left a legacy of many not marrying and unstable relationships often prone to jealousies, said Prof Jewkes.
She said: 'It creates an incredibly unhappy situation which forges many of the tensions which result in gender-based violence.'
Violence is rife and children often grow up seeing it used around them.
Men's attitudes are also responsible. Beliefs that men own women, can tell them what to do, and then punish them for infractions are widely held.
She said: 'Men have a sense of entitlement that stems from what they perceive as their position in African culture and that entitlement is framed around an entitlement to dominate and control women.'
Last year, the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) produced the first study on the prevalence of violence against women in general.
As well as reporting that 36 per cent of South African women had experienced physical or sexual violence at some time, the study also look at men's and women's attitudes.
The study found 70 per cent of men believed a woman should obey her husband, and 23 per cent believed a woman can never refuse to sex with her husband.
Nine per cent agreed that if a woman does something wrong, a man can punish her, and eight per cent believed there are times when a woman deserves to be beaten. Some 31 per cent thought men should defend their reputation with force if necessary.
'Men feel like they own you'
Meanwhile, some 11 per cent of women said a woman should tolerate violence in order to keep her family together.
Mpumi Zungu, one of the researchers, said: 'The attitudes were more confirming what we know and also giving us an extent of what is exactly going on which is sustaining gender-based violence in the country.'
'You see this is men, but you also see that these gender norms are not only held among men.'
Nompilo Gcwensa, who runs a support network for abused women in KwaZulu Natal province, said she was not surprised by media reports of killings.
She said: 'I am not surprised any more. It has been a number of stories in the past year, women and children killed, the number is very high.
'More especially, it's intimate partner violence. In 2023 and 2024 we had high numbers of women being killed.
She added: 'We have something where men feel like they own you, so if you change, they don't want another man to have you. Men once they have you they feel like they are entitled to you. They don't want another man to have you.
'I think it's a mental issue of men not having a platform to talk and their traumatic experience and they become violent at a later stage.'
Another key factor in reducing violence is thought to be a legal system that brings attackers to justice, and ends impunity for men who attack women.
Yet while South Africa has strict punishment for such attacks – indeed the HSRC survey found many men thought the laws too strict – the courts and legal system are clogged by a huge backlog of cases.
'Accountability is not there. One of the gaps we have is the justice system not being fully functional,' says Ms Gcwensa.
Jenna Bayer, a psychologist who works with victims of violence, said: 'You go to report your case and then you get treated dismissively or it's hostile and so you get re-traumatised again.
'So because of this, reporting becomes futile and as a result of this, you have got this impunity among abusers.'
As the rate of killings climbs again, Mmamoloko Kubayi, constitutional development minister, said earlier this year society risked becoming numb to the deaths.
She said: 'Stories of women getting killed by their partners have become so prevalent on social media platforms – to the extent that when we read them, we no longer get shocked or outraged.
'We just read and move on.'