South African president pledges cleanup of high-risk areas after 12 women killed

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Tuesday a nationwide cleanup of high-risk areas following the discovery of 12 women's bodies in an area east of Johannesburg over a two-month period. The killings triggered widespread public outrage over the scale of violence against women in a country with one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world.

In an address to the nation, Ramaphosa announced a multidisciplinary, national-level emergency response to the murders, for which four arrests have been made. He said police have not yet found evidence that the deaths were the work of a single perpetrator, despite widespread fears given the proximity of the discoveries.

New protective measures

The president acknowledged the government has not done enough in recent years to protect women and girls. He ordered every municipality to immediately begin a women's safety audit to identify high-risk locations, including broken streetlights, overgrown public spaces, abandoned buildings, unsafe transport routes, and poorly secured parks. He also announced an enforcement package targeting alcohol-related violence, while stressing that alcohol never excuses such crimes and that responsibility always lies with the perpetrator.

Call for deeper change

Ramaphosa said violence against women does not begin with physical assault but with attitudes that treat women as inferior and beliefs that men have the right to control women. He called on men and boys to take the lead in ending gender-based violence, stating that the burden of male violence has wrongly been placed on women, and that the solution cannot be to restrict women's freedom.

South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with 5,427 people murdered between April and June this year. According to the South African Human Rights Commission, 569 women were killed and 1,052 others survived attempted murder during the same period.