By Phakamisa Mayaba
One night in early June, Thulisa Makinana*, a young woman from the Colesberg ‘township’ of Kuyasa, went out with friends. Early the next morning, her lifeless body was found in the veld, with multiple stab wounds allegedly inflicted by an intimate partner.
The incident sent shock waves through this normally peaceful Karoo town. The provincial government extended its condolences to her family, and the Central University of Technology in Bloemfontein, where she was enrolled, releasing a media statement condemning her murder.
Residents descended on the Colesberg Magistrate’s Court for the suspect’s first appearance, demanding that he be denied bail. On 17 November, just days before the massive national shutdown against gender-based violence (GBV), residents attended the continued court proceedings in solidarity with the bereaved family. Dressed in black, the crowd sang songs and chanted slogans lamenting the stranglehold of GBV that continues to choke even remote platteland dorpies.
The national statistics paint a bleak picture of the highest numbers of GBV anywhere in the world. Eleven women are murdered every day, which works out to one woman every 2.5 hours. Furthermore, 113 rapes are reported daily, a figure which some organisations dispute, suggesting it is probably way higher. But perhaps it is the brutal ways in which some of these crimes are committed that leaves one reeling.
The stories are often so grotesque that even in this, one of the world’s most violent societies, they linger in the news cycle, and attract global media attention. Think of Anene Booysen, the 17-year-old girl who was gang-raped, disembowelled and left for dead at a construction site in the town of Bredasdorp in the Western Cape.
The attack was so violent that Dr Elizabeth de Kock, who was on duty when Booysen was admitted to the trauma unit at the town’s Otto du Plessis Hospital, could only compare her injuries to those sustained by victims of serious car accidents. ‘I didn’t think it was possible that someone could do that to anyone,’ she later testified.
But the record shows that they do. In June 2020, Tshegofatso Pule, 28, was found shot in the chest and hanging from a tree in Durban Deep, Roodepoort. She was eight months pregnant. It emerged that she had been killed by a hitman, hired by her boyfriend, Ntuthuko Shoba.
In August 2019, Uyinene Mrwetyana, a 19-year-old student at the University of Cape Town, made the mistake of going to a post office in a ‘safe’ nearby suburb. This brought her into the company of Luyanda Botha, a Post Office employee, who raped her, bludgeoned her to death, doused her body with petrol and set it on fire. Her body was eventually found in a hole beside an unused railway track in the township of Lingelethu West in Khayelitsha.
In August 2021, Nosicelo Mtebeni, a 23-year-old law student at the University of Fort Hare, was killed and dismembered by a boyfriend. Her body parts were found in a suitcase on a dump site.
In April 2917, Karabo Mokoena, a part-time business student, was murdered by her boyfriend. Her burnt remains were found buried in a shallow grave in a deserted field in Johannesburg.
In May 2025, Olerato Mongale, a journalist who covered Mokoena’s story, was kidnapped and murdered. Her body was found not far from the area where Mokoena’s body was found.
Chesnay Keppler, Gontse Ntseza, Nomsa Jass, Hannah Cornelius … the list continues. And none of them older than 30.
Protest against gender-based violence outside the Houses of Parliament following the rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana, 4 September 2019. (Ashraf Hendricks / GroundUp)
Placards and wreaths outside the Clareinch Post Office where Uyinene Mrwetyana was raped and murdered. (Ashraf Hendricks / GroundUp)
Besides tourists, South Africa also attract druglords, sex traffickers, and at least one British man accused of orchestrating a hit on his wife while they were honeymooning here in 2010. Although Shrien Dewani was later acquitted, this reflected the perception that in South Africa you could pay somebody next to nothing to make somebody disappear for good.
Even more twisted is how, their fate notwithstanding, the country at least got to know of these aforementioned victims. Hashtags were created in their honour, placards were raised outside courts, campaigns came and went, and complete strangers immersed themselves in grief on social media – posting and resharing the mourning, words of condolence and saying ‘not in my name’. Most or the victims named earlier have become Wikipedia entries.
In 2002, a paper titled ‘The Role of the Community in Preventing Gender-Based Violence and Femicide: A Case Study of Northern Cape Province, South Africa’ was published in the International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology. It lists unemployment, poverty and alcohol abuse as some of the key drivers of GBV in the province.
The Diamond Fields Advertiser, a newspaper published in the provincial capital of Kimberley, often carries reports of booze-fuelled incidents of GBV, particularly in the town’s poorer communities. With the backing of research-based evidence, we know that the province’s high levels of alcohol abuse is an aggravating factor. Hospitals are often the scenes of bloody patients with stab wounds and other injuries sustained in drunken brawls.
But it is the sheer senselessness of it all that has rallied the community to unite against GBV. There is something that cuts especially deep when the roots between victim and perpetrator go back a long time, as they tend to do in these tightly knit communities.
Their parents might have been classmates, or broken communion in the same church. Their brothers could have played for rival soccer clubs, or dated the same girl. They might not have known each other by name, but they might have been a familiar face.
In other, less marginalised places, people are cushioned against death and crime by social distance. Here, people die and everybody seems to recall a story about them. In their anger and grief, some will ponder about how so-and-so’s son could do such a thing.
And amid all the pain and suffering, the community will rise early, and on a balmy mid-morning they will stand outside the court in memory of Thulisa – all the promise she once held, the wonderful person she was amongst them, and say, ‘you are not forgotten.’ And some will wonder, what have we become when we prey on one of our own?
* Not her real name.
Featured image: Protest against gender-based violence outside the Houses of Paliament following the rape and murder of Uyinene Mrwetyana, 4 September 2019. (Ashraf Hendricks / GroundUp)
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on Phakamisa Mayaba’s website, eParkeni. Used with permission.