LUCKY MATHEBULA | The leadership GBV demands

South Africa’s gender-based violence (GBV) crisis is not only a criminal justice emergency; it’s a test of national leadership.

The first national GBV survey, conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council, found that one in three women aged 18 or older had experienced physical violence in their lifetime. In the final three months of 2024 alone, more than 11,800 rapes were recorded — about 128 a day — according to the Gender-Based Violence and Femicide Response Fund’s 2024/25 annual report.

These figures are horrifying, but statistics must not replace action. Thirteen women’s bodies have been found in Gauteng over the past three months, and others in KwaZulu-Natal and nationally. The crisis persists because warnings are ignored, institutions fail to co-ordinate, and accountability dissolves after each statement of outrage.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s address this week on gender-based violence and femicide must be judged against this record of ignored warnings and dissolved accountability. The address was not merely insufficient; it exposed the exhausted ritual through which government now performs concern without accepting culpability.

Leadership begins where sympathy ends — with responsibility that can be measured and failure that carries consequences

After seven years of acknowledged failure, another review of stalled cases, another deadline on forensic backlogs and another round of municipal safety audits cannot be presented as leadership. These are basic duties the state should already have discharged.

The address named no office bearer responsible for past failure, offered no credible enforcement mechanism, and did not explain what consequences would follow when the new directives were ignored. By leaving institutional responsibility undefined, it shifted attention from the state’s obligations to the moral conduct of individual citizens.

That displacement was most evident in the appeal to “good men”, which shifted the centre of gravity from state accountability to private morality, as though femicide persists because decent citizens have not spoken loudly enough rather than because institutions repeatedly abandon women. The appeal thus became compassion as political theatre: solemn words masking a government reluctant to attach names, budgets, deadlines and sanctions to its promises.

Leadership begins where sympathy ends — with responsibility that can be measured and failure that carries consequences.

The cost of that displacement is clearest in the warnings that precede femicide. Coercion, threats and abuse often escalate before violence becomes fatal, and victims may alert relatives, friends or the police. These are not private warnings; they are opportunities for public institutions to intervene. When they do not trigger protection, investigation and consequences, the failure is not a lack of information. It is a failure to turn knowledge into co-ordinated action.

Closing that gap between warning and intervention makes effective policing indispensable, but policing cannot rest on slogans or periodic operations. A victim-centred police service must respond promptly, recognise escalating abuse, protect survivors and investigate thoroughly. Prosecutors, courts, health services and communities must form an unbroken chain of responsibility in which no warning, docket or protection request disappears.

But even an unbroken criminal justice chain addresses violence only after social permission for it has taken root. Policing alone cannot repair a society in which violence against women is concealed, excused or normalised. When public authority evades responsibility, private domination gains social permission.

Civic breakdown does not stop at the household door. Political assassinations, intimidation and the maiming of civilians reveal in public life the same disorder that coercion, assault and femicide reveal in private life. Both flourish when power is detached from service and accountability. An elite that treats office as an enterprise of accumulation teaches society that authority is an entitlement to possess, command and punish.

A country serious about GBV must organise people into work, service, learning, local reconstruction and democratic authorship, while directly challenging the patriarchal norms that turn frustration into violence against women

Yet domination survives not only through open force; it also survives through disguise. Perpetrators rarely present themselves truthfully. Many wear masks of compassion, speaking the language of love, protection, provision, religious virtue or political service to secure trust and silence. In public they appear attentive and generous; in private, care becomes surveillance, protection becomes possession and generosity becomes indebtedness. Families, congregations, parties and workplaces then defend reputation over testimony.

The coming elections will test whether democratic institutions can give legitimate anger an ethical and constructive architecture. A country serious about GBV must organise people into work, service, learning, local reconstruction and democratic authorship, while directly challenging the patriarchal norms that turn frustration into violence against women.

This is the leadership for which the GBV crisis is searching: authority made answerable through named duties and enforceable consequences. A station commander must answer for a neglected complaint, an investigator for a mishandled docket, a prosecutor for avoidable delay, a minister for inadequate capacity and a mayor for unsafe public spaces and broken referral systems.

Parties, workplaces, congregations and communities must likewise refuse to shelter perpetrators behind status or staged compassion.

South Africa does not lack declarations against GBV; it lacks leaders willing to make responsibility visible and failure consequential. Until that changes, masked perpetrators will keep occupying the space where moral authority should stand.

• Mathebula is a public policy analyst, academic, strategist, and the founder of The Thinc Foundation