African manhood is broken – and it’s costing women their lives

On May 25, Olorato Mongale, a 30-year-old pistillate from South Africa, went connected a day with a antheral she had precocious met.

Less than 2 hours later, she was dead.

Her half-naked assemblage was recovered by the roadside successful Lombardy West, a suburb northbound of Johannesburg. It showed signs of terrible trauma and bruising. Investigators concluded that she had been murdered elsewhere and dumped astatine the scene.

Her brutal and senseless sidesplitting led to a question of grief and outrage connected societal media. Days later, a household spokesperson revealed that Mongale – a master’s pupil astatine the University of the Witwatersrand – had erstwhile worked arsenic a journalist. She near the assemblage 7 years agone owed to the affectional toll of reporting connected gender-based unit and femicide (GBVF).

Her household said Mongale had grown progressively anxious astir her ain vulnerability to antheral violence. In particular, the 2017 execution of 22-year-old Karabo Mokoena haunted her. Mokoena was stabbed to decease by her ex-boyfriend, Sandile Mantsoe, who past burned her assemblage beyond designation and buried the remains successful unfastened grassland successful Lyndhurst – a suburb conscionable kilometres from wherever Mongale’s assemblage was found.

Despite her conscious efforts to debar Mokoena’s fate, Mongale yet became what she had feared most: different sanction added to the agelong and increasing database of South African women murdered by men.

At her ceremonial connected June 1, her mother, Keabetswe Mongale, said her girl had tried desperately to combat disconnected her attacker.

“When I saw her astatine the authorities mortuary, I could spot that my girl fought. She fought until her nails broke,” she said.

Her devastating decease serves arsenic a stark reminder that women and girls crossed South Africa proceed to look an existential menace from gender-based violence, contempt years of authorities promises and reforms.

On May 24, 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into instrumentality a measure establishing the National Council connected Gender-Based Violence and Femicide. The assemblage is mandated to supply enactment and coordination successful the combat against GBVF. While it appeared to beryllium a measurement forward, it did not correspond a transformative argumentation shift.

This is not the archetypal specified initiative. In 2012, then-Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe launched the National Council Against Gender-Based Violence, with a akin mandate to coordinate nationalist anti-GBV efforts.

More than a decennary later, with yet different assembly successful place, GBVF crimes continue.

In November 2023, the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa released the country’s archetypal nationalist survey connected GBVF. It recovered that the persistence of gender-based unit is rooted successful “deeply ingrained societal norms and structures that perpetuate antheral dominance and reenforce sex hierarchies … starring to pistillate subordination, systemic inequalities, and unit against women”.

The destructive effect of entrenched patriarchy is undeniable. In South Africa, a pistillate is murdered each 3 hours. That is astir 8 women a day. One survey estimates that astir 7.8 cardinal women successful the state person experienced carnal oregon intersexual violence.

While women of each races and backgrounds are affected, Black women look higher rates of GBVF – an enduring bequest of apartheid and its structural inequalities.

This situation is not unsocial to South Africa. The panic faced by women and girls is simply a continent-wide phenomenon.

In November 2024, the United Nations published its study Femicides successful 2023: Global Estimates of Intimate Partner/Family Member Femicides, revealing that Africa had the world’s highest complaint of partner-related femicide that year.

Kenya stands retired for its staggering figures.

Between September 2023 and December 2024, the state recorded much than 7,100 cases of intersexual and gender-based violence. These included the murders of astatine slightest 100 women by antheral acquaintances, relatives, oregon intimate partners successful conscionable 4 months.

Among the victims was Rebecca Cheptegei, a Ugandan Olympian and parent of two, who competed successful the marathon astatine the 2024 Paris Games. On September 5, 2024, she died successful Eldoret, Kenya, from terrible burns aft her erstwhile spouse doused her successful petrol and acceptable her alight during a home dispute. He himself aboriginal died successful a infirmary from his injuries.

The Kenyan authorities aboriginal recognised GBVF arsenic the astir pressing information situation facing the state — a belated but important move.

On May 26, Kenya’s National Gender and Equality Commission noted that the surge successful GBVF crimes was driven by “a analyzable interplay of cultural, social, economic, and ineligible factors”. Patriarchal traditions proceed to substance inequality and legitimise violence, portion harmful practices specified arsenic forced marriage, pistillate genital mutilation (FGM), and dowry-related unit further endanger women’s lives. Economic hardship and women’s fiscal dependence lone deepen their vulnerability.

Across the continent, we are witnessing a unsafe resurgence of archaic patriarchal norms.

The COVID-19 lockdowns successful 2020 further exposed the standard of the crisis. Since then, countless behavioural alteration campaigns person been launched, but they person mostly failed.

This is nary surprise.

According to Afrobarometer information from November 2023, astir 48 percent of each Africans judge home unit is simply a backstage matter, not a transgression offence.

The uncomfortable information is that galore African men, careless of acquisition oregon economical status, bash not prioritise the information oregon rights of women and girls.

On International Women’s Day past year, South African rugby skipper Siya Kolisi said it plainly: “Men are not doing enough.”

Indeed, galore proceed to uphold harmful customs specified arsenic kid matrimony and stay disengaged from efforts to support women. Years of bare rhetoric person led to a increasing assemblage count.

It is clip for African men to instrumentality afloat ownership of this situation and perpetrate to extremist change.

They indispensable cull taste practices and ideals of manhood that dehumanise women. African cultures are not unchangeable, and patriarchy is not destiny. A new, egalitarian exemplary of African masculinity indispensable beryllium nurtured — 1 based connected dignity, equality, and nonviolence.

This taste reorientation indispensable statesman successful families and beryllium sustained done schools, spiritual and accepted forums, and assemblage life.

It indispensable hap for Olarato Mongale. For Rebecca Cheptegei. For the thousands of others whose lives were stolen.

And astir urgently, it indispensable hap for the women and girls crossed Africa who unrecorded each time knowing that their top menace whitethorn travel from the men closest to them.

There tin beryllium nary conscionable African aboriginal unless African manhood is transformed.