GBV: Band‑aid safety measures cannot stop femicide
· Citizen
There is something wrong with a country where a woman cannot go for a run without first being given a safety briefing.
Run in a group, tell someone where you are going, avoid isolated areas, don’t run after dark, change your route, carry your phone and be careful who you trust. South African women have become so accustomed to this language that we barely hear how absurd it is anymore.
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We live in a country where a woman is murdered every three hours, and almost always, the questions focus on what a woman should have done differently and never about why a man felt entitled to take her life.
The truth is we tell women to become more vigilant because it is the easy way out, but moving the responsibility away from the people and systems that should carry it is dangerous.
Vigilance is not prevention. Vigilance is what we ask when systems have failed to make us safe. It is putting a Band-aid on a bleeding wound. South Africa has already recognised gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide as a national crisis and a National Council on GBV and Femicide is now in place, but that only scratches at the surface.
What we need is better infrastructure, including working streetlights, safer pedestrian routes and public spaces, effective policing, functional justice systems and better intelligence.
Our own data tells us how normalised this lack of public accountability has become. Statistics South Africa’s latest governance, public safety and justice survey found that only 37.9% of people aged 16 and older felt safe walking alone in their neighbourhood when it was dark, and more than 46% said they had taken some action to protect themselves against crime.
The Human Sciences Research Council’s first national GBV prevalence study found that about 7.3 million women aged 18 and older have experienced physical violence during their lifetime, while more than 2.15 million have experienced sexual violence.
During just the first quarter of the 2025-26 financial year, police recorded 50 511 GBVF cases, of which 30 736 resulted in arrests or referrals to the National Prosecuting Authority.
This is evidence of a public health emergency but our overall response is still overwhelmingly reactive. A woman disappears then we mobilise. A body is found, then we cut the grass. This is not prevention. This is making the wound much worse.
Perhaps the biggest intervention though is men themselves. Just this week, I was listening to a radio station that had opened its phone lines to callers wanting to share their hurt, anger and fear over the news of the recent deaths of women around Ekurhuleni. Every single caller was a woman. Not one man called in.
So where are the men asking other men why women are being hunted, assaulted and killed? Why are the men not asking why police are not patrolling regularly or interrogating why fellow men believe they can act with impunity?
If we want to change the levels of GBV in this country, we need to consider the environments in which young boys are growing up and the messages they receive about masculinity, power, women and relationships.
Children absorb what they see around them and so we need South African men to model good behaviour for the next generations. If boys grow up in homes and communities where violence, dominance or unequal treatment of women is normalised, those behaviours can become part of their understanding of what it means to be a man.
That is why prevention has to include deliberate conversations with boys about respect, consent, healthy relationships, emotional expression and equality.
We also have to be willing to look at the health of the family and community structures around our children. Almost half of all South African households have absent fathers. Again, where are the men, and what conversations are fathers having with their sons and what responsibility are they taking for raising the next generation?
Women cannot be expected to raise the next generation of men and simultaneously carry the burden of preventing the violence those men may perpetrate. Boys need positive, present men in their lives who model respect, responsibility and healthy masculinity.
We ask mothers to raise better boys and urge women to speak up, report abuse and teach their daughters how to stay safe. Clearly this is not working. We cannot keep asking women to organise their lives around the possibility that a man might kill them. We need to organise our society around making sure it doesn’t happen.
Female safety is a problem for men and society to solve, not women. Fathers, sons, brothers, friends, coaches, teachers, faith leaders and community leaders all have a role to play in challenging the behaviours they see around them and creating better infrastructure for women.
Working streetlights, properly maintained public spaces and safer public transport should be a concern for men as well as women. The danger women face today is because of male behaviour and the failure of those responsible for public and environmental safety.
– Mtshali is chief executive officer of Shout-It-Now