On Could 25, Olorato Mongale, a 30-year-old lady from South Africa, went on a date with a person she had 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. Specifically, the 2017 homicide of 22-year-old Karabo Mokoena haunted her. Mokoena was stabbed to dying 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 aware efforts to keep away from Mokoena’s destiny, Mongale finally 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 might see that my daughter fought. She fought till her nails broke,” she mentioned.
Her devastating dying serves as a stark reminder that ladies and women throughout South Africa proceed to face an existential menace from gender-based violence, regardless of years of presidency guarantees and reforms.
On Could 24, 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into legislation a invoice establishing the Nationwide Council on Gender-Based mostly Violence and Femicide. The physique is remitted to supply management and coordination within the battle towards GBVF. Whereas it gave the impression to be a step ahead, it didn’t signify 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-Based mostly 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 constructions that perpetuate male dominance and reinforce gender hierarchies … resulting in feminine subordination, systemic inequalities, and violence towards girls”.
The harmful impact of entrenched patriarchy is simple. In South Africa, a girl 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 greater charges of GBVF – an everlasting legacy of apartheid and its structural inequalities.
This disaster is just not distinctive to South Africa. The fear confronted by girls and women is a continent-wide phenomenon.
In November 2024, the United Nations printed its report Femicides in 2023: World Estimates of Intimate Accomplice/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 not less than 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 companion 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 probably the most urgent safety problem dealing with the nation — a belated however essential transfer.
On Could 26, Kenya’s Nationwide Gender and Equality Fee famous that the surge in GBVF crimes was pushed by “a posh interaction of cultural, social, financial, and authorized elements”. Patriarchal traditions proceed to gas inequality and legitimise violence, whereas dangerous practices similar to compelled marriage, feminine genital mutilation (FGM), and dowry-related violence additional endanger girls’s lives. Financial hardship and girls’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 size of the disaster. Since then, numerous behavioural change campaigns have been launched, however they’ve largely failed.
That is no shock.
In keeping with Afrobarometer information from November 2023, almost 48 p.c of all Africans imagine home violence is a non-public matter, not a felony offence.
The uncomfortable fact is that many African males, no matter schooling or financial standing, don’t prioritise the security or rights of girls and women.
On Worldwide Ladies’s Day final yr, South African rugby captain Siya Kolisi mentioned it plainly: “Males should not doing sufficient.”
Certainly, many proceed to uphold dangerous customs similar to little one marriage and stay disengaged from efforts to guard girls. Years of empty rhetoric have led to a rising physique rely.
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 should not unchangeable, and patriarchy is just not 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 means of colleges, spiritual and conventional boards, and group life.
It should occur for Olarato Mongale. For Rebecca Cheptegei. For the hundreds of others whose lives had been stolen.
And most urgently, it should occur for the ladies and women throughout Africa who dwell every day understanding that their biggest menace could come from the lads closest to them.
There may be no simply African future until African manhood is remodeled.