South Africa is once again at a crossroads. Emotions are running high, and justifiably so. Women continue to lose their lives in circumstances that expose the frightening extent of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) in our society.
The latest developments in Gauteng have only deepened these concerns. Police have confirmed that the number of women whose bodies have been discovered in and around Kempton Park and elsewhere in Ekurhuleni has risen to 9 (as of Thursday evening). These developments demand an urgent response from the state. They also require us to have an honest conversation about the root causes of gender-based violence and femicide. Otherwise, we risk getting the diagnosis wrong and administering the wrong medicine to the patient.
For the first time since the Constitutional Court’s 1995 judgment in S v Makwanyane, which abolished the death penalty, South Africans from across the political spectrum have increasingly called for a more retributive criminal justice system. Among the prominent voices supporting tougher punishment is the president, who has called for perpetrators of rape and gender-based violence to receive life sentences and face the harshest possible prison conditions.
The anger behind these demands is understandable. However, anger must not displace reason. Reintroducing capital punishment (the death penalty) would not necessarily address the causes of violence, and it would create the irreversible possibility of wrongful executions. More fundamentally, there is no convincing basis for assuming that inflicting greater violence through punishment will, by itself, eliminate violence in society.
If we accept the logic Nelson Mandela expressed, that no person is born hating another person, then we should also question the assumption that men are naturally born violent or predisposed to becoming perpetrators of gender-based violence. The question, therefore, is not whether violence must be condemned and punished. It must. The question is what produces and sustains the conditions in which such violence becomes possible.
Social upbringing plays an enormous role, and the evidence for this is no longer anecdotal. The first South African National Gender-Based Violence Study, released in 2024, found that men who reported medium or high scores on a childhood trauma scale (they experienced or witnessed physical, sexual or emotional abuse before the age of 15), were significantly more likely to go on to perpetrate physical intimate partner violence than men with low childhood trauma scores.
By the same token, men who were bullied while growing up, or who bullied others themselves, showed the same pattern. A boy who grows up in a household where violence against women is normalised, or who is taught from a young age to suppress emotion and treat aggression as proof of manhood, internalises violence as an acceptable way of resolving conflict and asserting identity.
This does not mean that every child exposed to violence will become a perpetrator, nor does it excuse criminal conduct. It does, however, suggest that prevention must begin long before a crime is committed, and that the cycle is intergenerational unless something interrupts it.
Poverty and unemployment may also be contributory factors, and here too the study offers something more than speculation. It found that men living in households experiencing food insecurity, an indicator of acute poverty, were significantly more likely to have perpetrated physical or sexual intimate partner violence. The study’s own framing is instructive: hegemonic masculinity still holds up the man as breadwinner, yet in the current economic climate, with high unemployment and instability, that role is often impossible to fulfil.
The resulting stress and frustration, the study notes, can manifest as violence against women and children. Prolonged unemployment can undermine a person’s sense of dignity, purpose and social belonging, and in some circumstances this may contribute to destructive attempts to assert authority through violence. Young men who lack meaningful opportunities may also become vulnerable to criminal networks and destructive forms of socialisation.
This explanation must be approached carefully, though, and the same study makes the case for that caution better than I could. Poverty cannot explain all gender-based violence. The researchers found that men with secondary school education actually reported higher sexual violence perpetration than men with only primary school education, and they concluded that factors beyond individual socio-economic status, such as societal attitudes toward gender roles, historical inequalities and systemic power imbalances, play a significant role in perpetuating violence.
Education and employment can provide opportunities and resources, but they do not automatically change underlying beliefs about gender and power. Wealthy and socially powerful men also abuse and kill women. In many such cases, the underlying problem may instead be a sense of entitlement: the belief that financial provision, marriage, intimacy or some other relationship gives a man ownership over a woman’s body or choices.
The study found this entitlement showing up directly in attitudes: men who held high inequitable views on gendered power relations were significantly more likely to have perpetrated physical or sexual violence than those who did not, regardless of how much they earned or how far they went in school.
Nearly one in ten men agreed that a woman who is raped is usually to blame for putting herself in that situation, and almost 12% agreed that if a woman does not physically fight back, it is not rape. Those are not the attitudes of men without options. They are attitudes of ownership.
Such conduct requires accountability, corrective education where appropriate, and criminal punishment where guilt is established through a fair and independent judicial process. No social or economic explanation can justify violence against women.
The latest developments in Gauteng also demonstrate why the state must do more than respond after bodies have been discovered. Police visibility, effective investigations, adequate forensic capacity and the protection of vulnerable communities are essential. The police have indicated that resources and specialised capacity are being increased in Gauteng. Those measures must translate into effective protection, credible investigations and accountability.
But policing and punishment, important as they are, cannot constitute the entirety of our response.
South Africa must also confront the social and economic conditions that leave many young people without meaningful opportunities. Sustainable employment, quality education, responsible parenting and programmes that challenge harmful ideas about masculinity are indispensable to any long-term strategy against gender-based violence.
As the national study itself concludes, laws alone are not sufficient to change the norms and practices that normalise violence against women. Enforcement has to be coupled with interventions that target the attitudes and childhood conditions that produce perpetrators in the first place.
None of this is an attempt to suggest that men are inherently violent, or that unemployment excuses criminal conduct. It is an attempt to reject simplistic explanations and to recognise that prevention requires us to understand how violence is learned, normalised and reproduced, whether in a shack or a mansion.
South Africa cannot meaningfully address gender-based violence and femicide through harsher punishment alone. We need a criminal justice system that protects women, investigates crimes competently and punishes offenders fairly. We also need a society that confronts harmful social attitudes, creates meaningful opportunities for young people and restores dignity to communities that have been deprived of hope.
The discovery of yet another woman’s body should not become merely another news cycle. It should compel us to ask whether our responses are addressing the problem at its roots, or whether we are simply waiting for the next tragedy before acting. – By Lehumo Sejaphala (X: @Masterndozi)
Lehumo Sejaphala holds a BA Law and LLB degree from Wits University and an LLM from the University of the Free State. He also runs an online blog platform called the Voiceless and has contributed articles to various media houses.
