The country reacted with horror recently when a KwaZulu-Natal man allegedly killed his girlfriend in the most gruesome way imaginable — and then proceeded to post videos of himself and his bloody handiwork on social media.
But Sibusiso Lawrence Ntaka would not be the first man in South Africa to murder his partner. Based on experience, every man you see today has the potential to unleash violence and murder against a woman, including his partner. There is a long list of victims of all races and classes, going back years, despite our annual 16-day campaign against gender-based violence, observed more as a ritual than a determined intervention to end the scourge.
And every time a woman is killed, the temptation, in frustration, is to blame the police for not doing enough to stop the carnage that’s approaching endemic proportions.
True, the police have serious shortcomings, including in crime detection and law enforcement. These failures exist alongside those in a criminal justice system that leaves women vulnerable to harm or death, even where they have reported cases to police or obtained protection orders against culprits.
Can the police succeed in fighting crime if the majority of South Africa’s citizens are minded to break the law as a matter of course?
But, more fundamentally, what we have is a crime situation that has, in too many respects, spiralled out of control, fuelled largely by the police’s ineffectual enforcement of the country’s laws, whether it’s in our neighbourhoods or on our highways.
The question remains whether the police can on their own prevent criminality — including femicide — from happening, as opposed to simply investigating it after the fact, as they usually do. To put it more directly, can the police succeed in fighting crime if the majority of South Africa’s citizens are minded to break the law as a matter of course?
Is it not so that, in societies where order predominates over anarchy, policing becomes more effective, not only because the police service itself is more competent, but because it is directed at only a minority of the population, the majority being committed to obeying the law of the land? This they do whether the police are present or not.
Unpoliced, they know not to murder a fellow citizen; not to skip a red light or drive like a bat out of hell, in the process endangering fellow road users; and not to bribe officials or kill associates, including family members, for an insurance payout.
The failures of the police must be addressed to make the service more professional and responsive to the social environment officers work in. And the service must, of course, be given the necessary resources.
But at the same time our mindset as South Africans needs urgent attention. We must inculcate a culture of obeying the law, rather than breaking it at will. In our country, as disobedience of the law gradually becomes the norm, the balance between good order and criminal anarchy will, left unchecked, eventually tilt in the latter’s favour, turning us into a truly lawless society.
In relation to the murder of women specifically, we have to eradicate the mentality among many men that they own women and therefore can do to them as they please, including assaulting or killing them. This pernicious thinking often claims to have the endorsement of culture or religion.
To reverse it, we have to revisit our education system, so that it is not, at its core, indifferent to the crisis. School is where our children spend most of their time, and where they can learn good or bad things. The religious community, with its social influence, also has a crucial role to play in countering our murderous culture, rather than simply playing the detached onlooker.
In our homes and social institutions, we have to take the trouble to teach people that all lives, female and male, matter — and that taking someone’s life has severe consequences.
Often, as in the Ntaka instance, there will be attempts to explain away the transgressions, blaming either the victims themselves or the social causes of the behaviour. These vain justifications can never exonerate the perpetrators’ actions.
Without changing the thinking of men, the objective of removing for every woman in South Africa the ever-present threat and fear of being murdered by a man will prove an unattainable one — no matter how many police we have and how well trained they may be. Or how many prisons we build.
To win against lawlessness, we must change the criminal minds of a large number of our fellow citizens.
That Ntaka had sympathisers and apologists on social media serves merely to underline the pressing need to alter the way too many in our midst think.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.