WOMEN'S DAY | Why should a woman risk her life because she needs to use the bathroom?

This Women's Day, thousands of families across the country are still caught in a web of grief at the loss of loved ones who died simply for being women.

During 2020, Stats SA brought out a report entitled: “Crimes against women in South Africa, an analysis of the phenomenon of GBV and femicide”. The analysis, which explored the reasons for the country's inflated femicide rates, said only 29% of violent attacks on women were committed by an unknown person. The rest are committed by a partner, an ex-partner, an acquaintance, friend, relative or household member.

The statistics are shocking, and beyond that, every woman who dies is more than just a statistic. Every story has its own background and gruesome details, and yet, there are clear patterns that have emerged.

In this story, we revisit several well-known but heartbreaking stories and consider how they fit into the broader problems that underpin femicide and GBV in general by asking the following questions:

Why does the murder of a woman only make headlines if the attack is brutal enough?

In 2013, Anene Booysen became a household name, for all the wrong reasons. The 17-year-old was gang-raped and disembowelled at a construction site in Bredasdorp and left for dead. A security guard found her, still clinging to life, but she died later in the day. Were it not for the gruesome nature of her attack and murder, she would have been “just another forgotten victim” in the country’s most impoverished rural areas.

Receiving far less attention than the murder of middle class women, those living away from the metropole are often beyond the gaze of journalists or a potential public outcry.

According to a study by Lillian Artz, head of the gender, health and justice unit at the University of Cape Town (UCT), “Women in rural areas and severely underprivileged areas remain one of the most vulnerable groups in South Africa to violence in their communities and in their homes.

“Information on rural women, their experiences with violence and social development is both fragmented and inconsistent ... Violence against women keeps women in conditions of poverty, and fear of poverty keeps women trapped in violent situations.”

Why should a woman risk her life because she needs to use the bathroom?

The answer is: she shouldn’t. But in many areas of South Africa, this is the awful truth. For Sinoxolo Mafevuka, a resident of Khayelitsha in Cape Town, a trip to use the public bathroom on March 1 2016 was the last time she was seen alive. At 7pm that night, she headed off to the communal toilets 200m from her home. She had been cooking supper with her sister-in-law and had left her cellphone behind. She didn’t return, and her body was later found in a toilet cubicle. She had been brutally raped and murdered, with her face pushed under the toilet seat and the clothes she was wearing stuffed into the cistern.

Sadly, Sinoxolo’s fate was hardly that surprising and, had she not been murdered, the story of her rape might not have even been reported on at all. A study by researchers from Yale reported that annually between 2003 and 2012, there had been 635 sexual assaults on women travelling to and from toilets in Khayelitsha and that individual women are at a high risk of rape for the more than 90 hours a year attributable to this transit time.

Why do so many men in South Africa kill their current or ex partners?

Karabo Mokoena was just 22 when she mysteriously went missing in 2017. A few days later, her body was found in a shallow grave in a deserted field. Her brutal murder at the hands of her ex boyfriend, who stabbed her and then burnt her, led to the trending hashtag #MenAreTrash. Her killer, Sandile Mantsoe, claimed she had committed suicide but was later found guilty.

Karabo was one of many South Africans who die at the hands of an intimate partner or ex-partner. According to the South African Medical Research Council, the country remains ranked among those with the highest rates of intimate femicide in the world.

Studies have shown that 50.3% of women murdered in SA are killed by an intimate partner.

Are all victims of femicide from vulnerable communities?

Most are, but not all. In 2016, Susan Rohde died a horrific death at the hands of her wealthy estate agent husband Jason, who was having an affair. The two had fought when he wanted to leave their hotel room at a conference to see his mistress. Rohde strangled his wife to death and then attempted to fake a scene of suicide.

Like Reeva Steenkamp in 2013 and Gill Packham in 2018, Susan’s story made headlines and captured the imagination of a media audience that is often more interested in or outraged by the murder of wealthy women when compared with poorer women. However, all women are vulnerable to acts of murder or violence. According to studies, the major difference is access to justice for the bereft.

According to a study done by UCT, “The achievement of access to justice is impeded by a number of factors, including socioeconomic inequalities ... It will require the allocation of significant financial and human resources to overcome the obstacles preventing those who cannot afford the cost of private legal representation from effectively accessing the legal system.”

Are female activists and whistleblowers more vulnerable to murder than their male counterparts?

On October 22 2020, environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase was at home cutting onions for dinner when three men entered her house and shot her six times. She died in front of her 13-year-old grandson and two of his friends, aged eight and 10. Ntshangase was head of an organisation resisting the expansion of an open-cast coal mine near Hluhluwe-iMfolozi park. She was 63 and had been assassinated for resisting a corporate act of greed.

In 2021, Babita Deokaran, a senior financial officer in the Gauteng department of health and an important witness in an investigation of corruption within the department, was assassinated.

“Discrimination linked to anti-corruption practices are not exempt from gender bias and this includes female whistleblowers. Women are often intimidated, harassed and even abused for standing up to corporate malpractice,” said the National Business Initiative.

The cases of Ntshangase and Deokaran show that they even risk being murdered for taking a principled stance.

An international study by Georgetown University in the US found that female whistleblowers suffer more retaliation than their male counterparts. 

Home is unsafe for many women, but what about public spaces?

You’d think stepping into a post office in a leafy suburb is as safe as a place could be. However, on August 24 2019, UCT student Uyinene Mrwetyana, 19, walked into the Clareinch post office in Claremont. There she was raped and murdered by a post office clerk, and later found dead in a shallow grave after being reported missing for several days.

Her death sparked yet another moment of outrage in the country, and activists came together to continue the fight against GBV, with the government also stepping into the ring. In the wake of widespread protests after Uyinene’s death, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced reforms. These would include harsher punishment for sex offenders, and the public disclosure of the national register for sex offenders.

However, the scourge of violence against women in SA is so deeply entrenched that the statistics hardly seem to change. The crime stats in the same year as Uyinene’s death showed that a woman is murdered in the country every three hours. SA also has one of the worst rape rates in the world, and in 2016 ranked fourth out of 183 countries for incidence of femicide, according to the World Health Organisation.

LISTEN | No justice for 52-year-old rape victim after case closed 

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