On Might 25, Olorato Mongale, a 30-year-old girl from South Africa, went on a date with a person she had just lately met.
Lower than two hours later, she was lifeless.
Her half-naked physique was discovered by the roadside in Lombardy West, a suburb north of Johannesburg. It confirmed indicators of extreme trauma and bruising. Investigators concluded that she had been murdered elsewhere and dumped on the scene.
Her brutal and mindless killing led to a wave of grief and outrage on social media. Days later, a household spokesperson revealed that Mongale – a grasp’s pupil on the College of the Witwatersrand – had as soon as labored as a journalist. She left the occupation seven years in the past as a result of emotional toll of reporting on gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF).
Her household mentioned Mongale had grown more and more anxious about her personal vulnerability to male violence. Particularly, the 2017 homicide of 22-year-old Karabo Mokoena haunted her. Mokoena was stabbed to loss of life by her ex-boyfriend, Sandile Mantsoe, who then burned her physique past recognition and buried the stays in open grassland in Lyndhurst – a suburb simply kilometres from the place Mongale’s physique was discovered.
Regardless of her acutely aware efforts to keep away from Mokoena’s destiny, Mongale in the end turned what she had feared most: one other title added to the lengthy and rising record of South African girls murdered by males.
At her funeral on June 1, her mom, Keabetswe Mongale, mentioned her daughter had tried desperately to battle off her attacker.
“Once I noticed her on the authorities mortuary, I may see that my daughter fought. She fought till her nails broke,” she mentioned.
Her devastating loss of life serves as a stark reminder that ladies and ladies throughout South Africa proceed to face an existential risk from gender-based violence, regardless of years of presidency guarantees and reforms.
On Might 24, 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into regulation a invoice establishing the Nationwide Council on Gender-Primarily based Violence and Femicide. The physique is remitted to offer management and coordination within the battle in opposition to GBVF. Whereas it seemed to be a step ahead, it didn’t characterize a transformative coverage shift.
This isn’t the primary such initiative. In 2012, then-Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe launched the Nationwide Council In opposition to Gender-Primarily based Violence, with the same mandate to coordinate nationwide anti-GBV efforts.
Greater than a decade later, with yet one more council in place, GBVF crimes proceed.
In November 2023, the Human Sciences Analysis Council (HSRC) of South Africa launched the nation’s first nationwide examine on GBVF. It discovered that the persistence of gender-based violence is rooted in “deeply ingrained societal norms and buildings that perpetuate male dominance and reinforce gender hierarchies … resulting in feminine subordination, systemic inequalities, and violence in opposition to girls”.
The harmful impact of entrenched patriarchy is plain. In South Africa, a lady is murdered each three hours. That’s roughly 8 girls a day. One examine estimates that round 7.8 million girls within the nation have skilled bodily or sexual violence.
Whereas girls of all races and backgrounds are affected, Black girls face larger charges of GBVF – an everlasting legacy of apartheid and its structural inequalities.
This disaster isn’t distinctive to South Africa. The fear confronted by girls and ladies is a continent-wide phenomenon.
In November 2024, the United Nations printed its report Femicides in 2023: International Estimates of Intimate Associate/Household Member Femicides, revealing that Africa had the world’s highest price of partner-related femicide that yr.
Kenya stands out for its staggering figures.
Between September 2023 and December 2024, the nation recorded greater than 7,100 circumstances of sexual and gender-based violence. These included the murders of at the very least 100 girls by male acquaintances, relations, or intimate companions in simply 4 months.
Among the many victims was Rebecca Cheptegei, a Ugandan Olympian and mom of two, who competed within the marathon on the 2024 Paris Video games. On September 5, 2024, she died in Eldoret, Kenya, from extreme burns after her former associate doused her in petrol and set her alight throughout a home dispute. He himself later died in a hospital from his accidents.
The Kenyan authorities later recognised GBVF as essentially the most urgent safety problem dealing with the nation — a belated however essential transfer.
On Might 26, Kenya’s Nationwide Gender and Equality Fee famous that the surge in GBVF crimes was pushed by “a fancy interaction of cultural, social, financial, and authorized components”. Patriarchal traditions proceed to gas inequality and legitimise violence, whereas dangerous practices resembling pressured marriage, feminine genital mutilation (FGM), and dowry-related violence additional endanger girls’s lives. Financial hardship and ladies’s monetary dependence solely deepen their vulnerability.
Throughout the continent, we’re witnessing a harmful resurgence of archaic patriarchal norms.
The COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 additional uncovered the dimensions of the disaster. Since then, numerous behavioural change campaigns have been launched, however they’ve largely failed.
That is no shock.
In accordance with Afrobarometer information from November 2023, almost 48 % of all Africans imagine home violence is a personal matter, not a felony offence.
The uncomfortable reality is that many African males, no matter training or financial standing, don’t prioritise the protection or rights of ladies and ladies.
On Worldwide Girls’s Day final yr, South African rugby captain Siya Kolisi mentioned it plainly: “Males usually are not doing sufficient.”
Certainly, many proceed to uphold dangerous customs resembling youngster marriage and stay disengaged from efforts to guard girls. Years of empty rhetoric have led to a rising physique depend.
It’s time for African males to take full possession of this disaster and decide to radical change.
They have to reject cultural practices and beliefs of manhood that dehumanise girls. African cultures usually are not unchangeable, and patriarchy isn’t future. A brand new, egalitarian mannequin of African masculinity have to be nurtured — one primarily based on dignity, equality, and nonviolence.
This cultural reorientation should start in households and be sustained by way of faculties, spiritual and conventional boards, and neighborhood life.
It should occur for Olarato Mongale. For Rebecca Cheptegei. For the 1000’s of others whose lives had been stolen.
And most urgently, it should occur for the ladies and ladies throughout Africa who reside every day realizing that their biggest risk could come from the lads closest to them.
There could be no simply African future until African manhood is remodeled.
