South Africa's president pledges action on gender violence after wave of killings

On a Tuesday night in late September, South Africa's president took to television to address a crisis that had gripped the nation in grief and anger. Eleven women's bodies had been discovered dumped across Ekurhuleni, the municipality east of Johannesburg, since mid-July. Eight of those bodies had surfaced in just the three weeks before Cyril Ramaphosa spoke. One of them was Elizabeth Moselakgomo, known as Tsontso, found on September 12 after she disappeared during an evening run from work. The discovery of so many women dead in one area, in such a short span of time, had shattered whatever fragile sense of safety existed and forced the government's hand.

Ramaphosa acknowledged what had become impossible to deny: the state had not done enough to protect women. He announced a series of measures, each with a deadline attached. Police would spend the next 60 days reviewing all unsolved murders, attempted murders, and serious sexual offences against women and children. In that same window, they would produce a funded plan to chip away at the forensic backlog that had allowed cases to languish. Local governments had five months to fix the infrastructure of neglect—broken streetlights, overgrown public spaces, abandoned buildings—that made women vulnerable. Five ministers would develop a strategy within 60 days to address alcohol-fuelled violence, though the president was careful to note that alcohol does not cause gender-based violence and can never excuse it. "Responsibility always lies with the perpetrator," he said. "But harmful alcohol use is a significant aggravating factor in interpersonal violence and it must be addressed as part of our wider prevention effort."

The president's most direct words were aimed at men. He called on them to stop being silent, to challenge relatives, friends, and colleagues who harassed, humiliated, or abused women. He named what had become routine: women changing their routes home, avoiding going out at night, warning one another about dangerous places and dangerous men. "We have placed the burden of male violence on women," he said. "That must change." It was a stark acknowledgment that for too long, gender-based violence had been treated as a woman's problem to solve, with women organizing, marching, protesting, and comforting survivors while the machinery of state remained slow or indifferent.

On the specific cases in Ekurhuleni, Ramaphosa said suspects had been arrested in connection with three of the eleven killings. Police had not found evidence pointing to a single serial killer responsible for all of them, but all possibilities remained under investigation. The cases would not be left to go cold, he promised.

But the announcement landed in a climate of deep skepticism. Activists and human rights organizations had heard promises before. Shenilla Mohamed, executive director of Amnesty International South Africa, pointed out that these were not new problems. Since 2019, when women had taken to the streets to protest gender-based violence, the country had been talking about solutions. "Yet here we are again in the face of continued attacks against women," she said. She welcomed the timelines but warned that they would only matter if they produced actual action and if there were consequences for failure to act.

Mpiwa Mangwiro-Tsanga and Bafana Khumalo of Sonke Gender Justice, an NGO focused on gender issues, raised a deeper concern. The government's response, they argued, remained focused on what happened after violence had already occurred—investigating cases, processing evidence, repairing unsafe spaces. These were necessary, they said, but they did not add up to a comprehensive prevention strategy. It was troubling, they added, that the president was asking municipalities to do what was already their mandate, yet they had consistently failed to deliver. The measures announced were reactive, not preventive. They addressed the aftermath, not the roots.