I will never forget the night of 27 June. It was the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans 2024 awards event — a wonderfully glamorous evening. I was presented with this award and shared the stage with other bright young South Africans who share my belief in this country and its potential. I celebrated with the young scientist, Didi Lekganyane.
Two weeks later, Didi was dead. She was found stabbed to death in her Johannesburg home and her husband, Cecil Kekana was arrested. I can still see Didi on the dance floor, looking gorgeous in her evening gown, celebrating a highlight in her professional life that was only beginning. She leaves a three-year-old daughter.
But there are many South African women whose deaths do not make the headlines. According to police statistics, a woman is killed by her intimate partner in South Africa every six hours. They are shot by husbands, stabbed by boyfriends or killed by lovers.
The violence against women in South Africa has reached shocking proportions. It motivated an art installation by South African artist Carin Bester, exhibited in August in the marble foyer extension at the Artscape Theatre Centre in Cape Town. Bester wanted to demonstrate how the women dying from gender-based violence (GBV) are not statistics but women with lives and dreams violently cut short. Bester honoured them by making video recordings every 190 minutes and posting them on social media — for more than a year. The videos show Bester saying, “She had a name”. The videos statistically coincide with a woman being murdered in South Africa. Bester used the period from 2015 to 2020 and statistics from SAPS, which at that time indicated that a woman was murdered every three hours and 10 minutes.
The installation is powerful and stunned me the first time I saw it. It brought home the devastating truth about how so many of the victims are faceless and nameless and are too quickly forgotten.
Didi’s sister, Lethabo Lekganyane, said it so well, “Didi was brutally taken from us in an act of senseless violence, a story we have heard too often and that has become too commonplace in our homes and our society.” It later transpired that Didi had laid a charge of assault against her husband two years ago, but the case was later withdrawn due to a “family intervention”. Newspaper reports also claimed she wanted to leave her husband and that the family knew he had been violent towards her.
What this tells us, is that people knew Didi was in an abusive situation. There was awareness about what was happening, but the appropriate action was not taken to protect her. Why not? Why do we, as South Africans, 30 years into our new democracy, still not know how to protect our women and daughters? How is it possible that we can celebrate a woman’s achievements, and support her in her professional endeavours — but we cannot keep her alive?
While GBV is a problem worldwide, South Africa is facing a crisis. Violence against women is unacceptably high. We also have the highest incidences of rape in the world.
Public protector Kholeka Gcaleka released a report on GBV in June this year, stating that police and the courts were not supporting victims of GBV adequately. It details how one victim, Altecia Kortje, was turned away from a court when she tried to apply for a protection order. She and her daughter were later found murdered.
Gcaleka’s report shows that many courts are not able to deal with victims of GBV, not even having private consultation rooms for victims. Her report also found that many police officials were reluctant to register cases and delayed in responding to scenes of domestic violence.
She said the Department of Social Development did not have enough shelters for women and that programmes like the Gender-Based Violence Command Centre and Everyday Heroes Programme, don’t have enough staff or operating ability. She recommended more training for police officials on GBV.
But we cannot wait for the government to act. All of us need to step up and become more involved in addressing violence against women. We must listen to our friends and family members and intervene if necessary. We must talk to the boys we are raising and teach them about anger management and conflict resolution. And ladies, let’s be clear: this is no time to be demure, modest and cutesy. We need to be bold, assertive, and unapologetically loud when it comes to our safety.
The sad truth is: it’s pointless talking about empowering our women if they’re being hurt and killed. We can’t exactly lean in if we’re constantly looking over our shoulders, can we?
Our priority must be to make women feel safe, first. Only then can we truly celebrate our achievements without the shadow of fear looming over us.
Inam Qoma is the chief executive and co-owner of Rothko Brand Partners. She is a member of the Conscious LeadHERS Youth Collaborative.
