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South African Gender-Based Violence Crisis — Facts, Causes & Ramaphosa’s Plan
This appeared in The Millennial Source
August is Women’s Month in South Africa, commemorating the 1956 Women’s March on Pretoria’s Union Buildings, a protest against the apartheid regime and the 1948 laws that established it. Unfortunately, 2019 celebrations of Women’s Month were marred by media reports of a spate of rapes and murders of young South African women.
The most publicized recent story was the rape and murder of Cape Town student Uyinene Mrwetyana. She was collecting a parcel at the Cape Town post office when a male employee attacked her. A few days earlier, champion boxer Leighandre Jegels was allegedly killed by her ex-boyfriend.
Around the same time, police found the body of 14-year-old Janika Mello, who was raped and murdered, in her grandmother’s backyard. Another woman from Cape Town, Meghan Cremer, was allegedly killed by three men as she left her farm. With the gruesome 2018 murder of student Karabo Mokoena by her boyfriend still fresh in South Africans’ minds, the August headlines renewed public outrage over gender-based violence (GBV).
