EDITORIAL: Saying ‘no more’ just skims the surface of violence against women
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On August 24 2019, Uyinene Mrwetyana walked into a post office in Claremont in Cape Town, an act that should be among the most mundane imaginable.
There was no-one in the locked office except Luyanda Botha, an employee who had called to tell her that her package had arrived.
According to his admission in court, he started making sexual advances, which escalated to rape and finally her murder. She fought back, on his own version, but he did not relent and continued with his abhorrent actions.
He finally carried the 19-year-old’s body out of the post office in a large postal mail bag before he dumped her body in a shallow hole and set it alight. Botha was caught and eventually sentenced to three life terms.
While Uyinene is one of thousands of women who are abused in SA, her death struck a chord and mass protests ensued almost immediately. After a few days of silence the anger at what women are subjected to grew so much that it couldn’t be ignored by the highest office in the land.
Having been criticised for his silence in the immediate aftermath, President Cyril Ramaphosa skipped an address to the World Economic Forum, which was meeting in Cape Town at the time, and instead addressed an angry crowd of demonstrators.
A year later the anniversary of her death underlines the reality still faced by women in SA: their bodies are seemingly fair game and their needs and wants are still subjected to those of men. It is also almost two years since a presidential summit on gender-based violence was held, a mere few months into Ramaphosa’s presidency.
The summit set in motion three bills — the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Bill, the National Register for Sexual Offences, and the Domestic Violence Amendment Bill — which were finally approved by the cabinet early in August and are now on their way to parliament.
But while laws are important in the fight against gender-based violence, there is a limit to what the law can achieve.
“A society that does not support notions of authority and control over women, and does not tolerate violence against women, is more likely to reduce gender-based violence,” Ramaphosa said in 2018.
The societal mores in SA would therefore have to radically change for any real and meaningful change to take place. Merely saying “no more” when ...
There was no-one in the locked office except Luyanda Botha, an employee who had called to tell her that her package had arrived.
According to his admission in court, he started making sexual advances, which escalated to rape and finally her murder. She fought back, on his own version, but he did not relent and continued with his abhorrent actions.
He finally carried the 19-year-old’s body out of the post office in a large postal mail bag before he dumped her body in a shallow hole and set it alight. Botha was caught and eventually sentenced to three life terms.
While Uyinene is one of thousands of women who are abused in SA, her death struck a chord and mass protests ensued almost immediately. After a few days of silence the anger at what women are subjected to grew so much that it couldn’t be ignored by the highest office in the land.
Having been criticised for his silence in the immediate aftermath, President Cyril Ramaphosa skipped an address to the World Economic Forum, which was meeting in Cape Town at the time, and instead addressed an angry crowd of demonstrators.
A year later the anniversary of her death underlines the reality still faced by women in SA: their bodies are seemingly fair game and their needs and wants are still subjected to those of men. It is also almost two years since a presidential summit on gender-based violence was held, a mere few months into Ramaphosa’s presidency.
The summit set in motion three bills — the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Bill, the National Register for Sexual Offences, and the Domestic Violence Amendment Bill — which were finally approved by the cabinet early in August and are now on their way to parliament.
But while laws are important in the fight against gender-based violence, there is a limit to what the law can achieve.
“A society that does not support notions of authority and control over women, and does not tolerate violence against women, is more likely to reduce gender-based violence,” Ramaphosa said in 2018.
The societal mores in SA would therefore have to radically change for any real and meaningful change to take place. Merely saying “no more” when ...
