The rape and murder of a young South African undergraduate of University of Cape Town, Uyinene Mrwetyana in a Post Office in Cape Town has brought to the fore the ugly trend which South Africa has become very notorious for; rising rates of domestic and sexual violence targeted against women. This development led the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa to declare that there is truly a crisis of violence against women in the country. Uyinene’s death sparked off dozens of protests and calls by women for the country to bring back the death penalty as way to curtail the rising trend of femicide in the country. StatsSA, the country’s official statistics agency defines femicide as: “The intentional killing of females (women or girls) because they are females.”

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 12.1 in every 100 000 women are victims of femicide in SA each year – a figure which is over 100 times worse than Italy in their newly-announced “state of crisis”, and five times worse than the global average of 2.6. However, the actual murder rate of women is even higher. Not every case can be defined under the blanket term of “femicide”. So by ingraining other factors provided by the South African Police Service, the overall picture shows that there are 15.2 female victims in every 100 000. By those calculations, a woman is murdered every three hours in South Africa.

While South Africa is not alone in countries with very high femicide rates, the development is quite troubling say officials who have been monitoring the trend over time. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are about three countries with higher femicide rates than South Africa. Honduras, by a wide margin is regarded as the worst place to be a woman, with a femicide rate of 32.7 – more than double that of its nearest competitor, Jamaica which stands at 15.5. While another southern African nation, Lesotho completes the top three with a femicide rate of 15.4 murdered women out of every 100 000 citizens. South Africa stands at fourth while Guinea-Bissau completes the top five with 11.1.

Observers say that the need for South Africans to take drastic actions against this trend became necessary when one factors in the fact that South Africa’s femicide rates are five times the global average. This becomes even more imperative when figures of related crimes start rolling in, showing that the need for self introspection by all strata of the South African society cannot be postponed. The numbers, experts say is nothing to be proud of pointing that the Police recorded about 177,620 reported crimes against women in the month of March 2019 alone while about 60,000 rapes takes place each year. However some dispute the official figures because of the stigma attached to rape saying that the figure is at least 10 times that, meaning the real figure may be around 600,000.

On the rising femicide rate for example, every three hours, a woman is murdered and every six hours, a husband or boyfriend kills a woman. In 2018, femicide rates increased by 117 per cent while the age-standardised interpersonal violence death rate for females was 4.8 times the global average rate of 2.6 leading the World Health Organisation (WHO) to rank South Africa as having the fourth highest female interpersonal violence death rate out of the 183 countries listed .

Children are not spared by this madness, says an official of the World Health Organisation who craved anonymity. Every three minutes a child is raped, making the country one of the highest incidences of child and infant rape in the world with one notable report citing 400 per cent increase in sexual violence against children and that it may still be on the rise. One out of every four women in the country had been raped, and a woman raped over the age of 25 in South Africa has a one in four chance that her attacker is HIV positive and more women than men are affected from HIV/AIDS.

Children are the victims of 41 per cent of all rapes reported in the country and of the 124,526 total rape cases reported in a particular three year period; children were the victims of a sickening 40 per cent of these cases. Between 2014 and 2015, there were 15,520 child rapes reported. Between 2015 and 2016, there were 16,389 child rapes reported and between 2016 and 2017, it rose even further: 19,071 child rapes reported. Infant rapes are common in South Africa—so bad that the babies and toddlers had to undergo extensive reconstructive surgery to rebuild urinary, genital, abdominal, or tracheal systems.

This is why President Cyril Ramaphosa is under enormous pressure to deliver serious changes that can protect the women of South Africa, many of whom no longer feel safe in our fractured society.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.