Ramaphosa: 'We have placed the burden of male violence on women' - TimesLIVE

President Cyril Ramaphosa has admitted that South Africa has placed the burden of male violence on women, saying women have been forced to change how they live while men have too often remained silent.

In one of the most emotional sections of his national address on Tuesday, Ramaphosa said women had been left to organise marches, warn one another about dangerous men and places, change their routes home and avoid going out at night because of the threat of violence against them.

“For too long, gender-based violence has been treated as a woman’s problem to solve,” he said.

“Women march, the women of our country organise, they speak out, they protest, and they confront, and they comfort survivors.”

“Women change their routes home, avoid going out at night, and warn one another about dangerous places and dangerous men.”

“We have placed the burden of male violence on women. That must change.”

The address came against the backdrop of the killings of women and girls across the country. The bodies of 11 women have been found in Ekurhuleni since July.

Ramaphosa began by speaking not only as president, but as a husband and father of daughters.

“I speak as the President of the Republic, but I also speak as a man, as a husband, and as a father to daughters,” he said.

“A number of women have been killed in our country, and no man should look away from the violence to which the women in our country are subjected.”

“The violence inflicted upon the women of South Africa is a source of profound pain and national shame.”

“The nation is angry. The women of South Africa are angry. Their anger is justified. I too share that anger.”

Ramaphosa then read out the names of women whose bodies had been found in Ekurhuleni and elsewhere.

Among them were Busisiwe Mahlangu, Itumeleng Kekana, Nomfesane Mjobo, Gracious Nkomo, Elizabeth Moselakgomo, Dineo Motapane, Jabulile Ntimba and Ntombifuthi Nxumalo.

He also named 10-year-old Octavia Swarts from Kraaifontein, Nomakhwezi Zitha from Delft, Taymin Platt from Eersterust, Josephine Tshabalala from Orlando East, Siyavuya Mlunguza from Komani and 73-year-old Mariette Mouton from Bredasdorp.

Others included Christina Nyalungu, a security officer at the University of Limpopo; Sibongile Mdali from Richmond; 15-year-old Amogelang Motshwaedi from Dinokana village; Pinky Shelembe; Ntombizana Mbanjwa; and Amanda Kosani from Port Alfred.

“These are only some of the women and girls whose lives have been taken away from us in recent weeks,” he said.

“Theirs are the names we know. There are others whose names we do not know yet.”

“There are women lying tonight in government mortuaries waiting to be identified, waiting for someone to claim them, waiting to be taken home and laid to rest.”

“How can our hearts not be broken? How can we not be angry?”

Ramaphosa said women across South Africa were living with the fear that they could be next.

“No woman should have to live with that fear,” he said.

But he said the answer could not be to restrict women’s freedom further.

“The solution to violence against women cannot be to make women less free,” Ramaphosa said.

“We cannot build a safer country by turning women into prisoners of precaution.

“Women should not have to reorganise their lives around the threat of male violence.”

He said women should not have to calculate where they could walk, when they could travel, what they could wear or whom they could trust.

“The freedom promised by our constitution cannot be a freedom enjoyed fully by men and cautiously enjoyed by women,” he said.

Ramaphosa placed responsibility for changing that reality squarely on men.

“That is why I am speaking directly tonight to the men and the boys of South Africa,” he said.

He called on men to challenge friends who humiliate their partners, colleagues who harass women and relatives who abuse their wives or girlfriends.

“Challenge the friend who humiliates his partner. Challenge the colleague who harasses women at work. Challenge the relative who abuses his wife or girlfriend,” he said.

“It is time for good men to stop being silent men.”

Ramaphosa said gender-based violence began long before physical violence was committed.

“Gender-based violence does not begin when a fist is raised,” he said.

“It does not begin when a woman is raped, or when a woman is killed. It begins much earlier.”

He said it began with attitudes that regarded women as inferior, beliefs that men had a right to control women, and the normalisation of jealousy, harassment and abuse.

He also pointed to violence within intimate relationships, saying a national study found that more than 60% of women murdered in 2021 and 2022 were killed by an intimate partner.

“Too often, the greatest threat to a woman is not an unknown perpetrator,” he said.

“It is someone the woman knows, someone they trust and love.”

Ramaphosa said prevention had to begin in homes and with how boys were raised.

“This is why prevention must begin in our homes,” he said.

“It must begin with how we raise our sons, with what boys learn about girls, anger, rejection and consent, and with what they learn from watching the men around them, especially their fathers.”

He said schools, universities, churches, workplaces and sporting organisations all had a role to play, but singled out men and boys as having a particular responsibility.

The president also rejected the idea that victims could ever be responsible for the violence inflicted upon them.

“Responsibility for violence always belongs to the person who commits it, never the victim,” he said.

“No woman causes herself to be abused. No item of clothing causes rape. No argument justifies assault.

“No relationship gives one person ownership over another. No rejection should justify violence. And no man has the right to take the life of a woman because she chooses to leave him.”

Ramaphosa said the country now had to move beyond mourning and condemnation.

Seven years after he first addressed the nation about the crisis, he said he did not want another president standing before South Africans seven years from now to deliver the same message.

“The women of South Africa should not have to fight gender-based violence alone,” he said. “The men of South Africa must stand up and fight it with them. This is a fight that we must take up as a nation together.”