When women live in fear, none of us can remain neutral

The discovery of the bodies of women across Ekurhuleni has confronted South Africans, yet again, with a truth that we have avoided for too long – women in our country are not merely unsafe in exceptional circumstances. Fear has become woven into the ordinary routines of their lives.

Behind every one of these victims is a human being: a daughter, mother, sister, friend, colleague or student. Each had a name, dreams and a future. Their deaths must not become another moment of national outrage that fades when the news cycle moves on.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on South Africans to stand up for women’s rights. That call must become more than another appeal made after a tragedy. We have issued statements, marched, held vigils and repeatedly declared that enough is enough. Yet women continue to die.

As a son, a brother, an uncle, a neighbour, a citizen and a leader, I am deeply troubled by what these killings say about who we have become. We cannot celebrate constitutional freedom while millions of women do not enjoy the basic freedom to move through their homes, streets, workplaces and communities without fear. We continually tell women not to walk alone, not to go out at night, to share their location and to change their route. In doing so, we continue to place the burden of preventing violence on those most likely to experience it, rather than on the perpetrators and the institutions responsible for safety and justice.

Women’s freedom cannot depend on how successfully they anticipate male violence.

Teach safety, and hold perpetrators to account

Safety advice has its place, but safety cannot be reduced to teaching women how to navigate danger – it must also mean changing the conditions that allow violence to occur and ensuring that those responsible are held accountable.

In recent days, there have rightly been calls for more men to speak out, especially those with influence in politics, business, education, faith communities, entertainment and sport. Sports stars and other public figures can help to shape how boys and young men understand courage, strength, respect and masculinity. However, their speaking out cannot be performative or limited to moments of national outrage. Men must challenge other men in change rooms, boardrooms, university residences, families, social gatherings and online groups. The attitudes that enable violence are often normalised long before the violence occurs.

But speaking is only the beginning. The harder work is confronting a friend, colleague, student or family member when a joke becomes degrading, when consent is treated casually, when controlling behaviour is normalised, or when violence is dismissed as a private matter. Male solidarity must never become solidarity with harmful behaviour.

Some have responded by noting that more men than women are murdered in South Africa. It is true that men make up the majority of murder victims in our exceptionally violent society. Every death matters. Violence against men, much of it inflicted by other men, demands urgent attention. However, this cannot become a contest over who suffers more. Acknowledging the gendered nature of violence against women does not suggest that murdered men matter less. Equally, the number of men killed does not erase the sexual violence, intimate partner violence, coercion and pervasive fear disproportionately experienced by women. We should be able to grieve murdered men while confronting femicide. Compassion is not scarce, and justice is not a competition.

Men have a role to play

Men must enter this struggle with humility and accountability – willing to examine their behaviour, challenge other men, and reject cultures of masculinity that confuse domination with strength. Silence and inaction are not neutrality.

This national crisis has particular implications for those of us who work in higher education. Universities are not merely places where students come to study; they are communities where young people form relationships, exercise leadership, develop identities and learn what it means to live with others. What happens in those communities matters far beyond the campus.

For those of us entrusted with student affairs and student development, the question is therefore not whether gender-based violence is part of our mandate. It is how seriously we are prepared to act on that mandate.

Universities and colleges are not islands. Students move among campuses, residences, transport hubs and neighbourhoods near and far. Many live beyond the reach of conventional campus security. The geography of student life extends far beyond the university gate. Gender-based violence is therefore not merely a disciplinary matter or the responsibility of a specialist office. It is an institution-wide responsibility. Student Affairs cannot carry it alone, nor can a gender office, counselling service, residence team, campus protection service or student leadership structure. Each has a distinct responsibility, but the institutional response must be connected, coordinated and accountable.

Having a policy is not enough

The test of an institution is not simply whether it has a policy, a reporting mechanism or a designated office. The harder question is whether a student who experiences harm knows where to go, is believed when they seek help, receives appropriate support, understands what will happen next, and sees the institution act within a reasonable and transparent timeframe.

A student who spends a lecture worrying about how she will get home safely is not participating equally in university life. A survivor navigating a reporting system while completing assignments is not afforded an equal opportunity to succeed. This is why gender-based violence cannot be separated from student success. Safety, belonging, mental health, residence life, academic participation and retention are interconnected. When students do not feel safe, their ability to participate fully in the academic project is compromised.

A university may measure graduation rates, retention, student engagement and academic performance, but it must also ask whether the conditions under which students are expected to succeed are safe, dignified and equitable.

The 2024 report of the Ministerial Task Team on Sexual Harassment and Gender-Based Violence and Harm in South African Universities, on which I had the privilege of serving, should not be treated as another report that sits on a shelf. It was intended to help the sector confront institutional weaknesses and strengthen how universities prevent, report, respond to, and account for gender-based harm.

Two years on, the sector should be able to answer some basic questions: Which recommendations have been implemented? Which have not? What are the barriers? Who is responsible for implementation? What resources have been committed? And what mechanism exists for students, staff and the public to assess progress?

Accountability should not only come after a crisis

This is ultimately an accountability question. University leadership and councils should be able to say, with evidence, what their institutions are doing to prevent gender-based violence, how their systems are performing, where the gaps remain, and what corrective action is being taken. Accountability should not begin only after a crisis.

At Wits, the Gender Equity Office represents an important part of the university's institutional response to gender-based harm. This difficult work, undertaken under intense scrutiny, should not be underestimated. The office has sometimes faced criticism. At the same time, institutional trust requires that criticism is neither dismissed, nor personalised. Where students or staff raise concerns about institutional responses, those concerns should be examined seriously, transparently and with a commitment to improvement. It should help the university listen, learn and strengthen its response.

The answer is to ensure that the office has the authority, expertise, independence and resources required to fulfil its role. But this office and offices like this cannot carry the institution’s responsibility alone. That responsibility belongs to leadership, council, residences, protection services, academic departments, student leaders and the entire university community, including the parents, guardians and communities that should nurture our students.

This is also why Wits’ residence culture initiative matters. Through intensive work in male residences, it seeks to question inherited ideas about masculinity and confront toxic elements of residence culture passed from one generation of students to the next. This initiative requires hours of listening to male students, hearing about their journeys and confronting their pain. It sometimes requires us to suspend judgement long enough to understand, without suspending accountability for conduct that causes harm. Male students cannot simply be treated as a problem to be managed. They must also be engaged as human beings capable of reflection, responsibility, and change.

Prevention requires us to hold two truths at the same time: people must be treated with dignity, and harmful conduct must have consequences. Understanding the conditions that shape behaviour is not the same as excusing behaviour.

Changing a culture takes sustained effort

This work is incomplete. It is difficult, contested and often criticised. But it is important. Changing a policy may take months; changing a culture inherited over generations requires sustained effort. Criticism must help us to improve the work, not lead us to retreat from it.

Across the sector, there should be a minimum standard of institutional response. Students should have access to trained first responders; confidential, accessible reporting channels; appropriate interim protection; psychosocial and academic support; competent, appropriately independent investigations; clear communication about process and timelines; and mechanisms for accountability when institutional systems fail. The question should not be whether a university has each of these somewhere in its policy architecture. The question is whether a student can actually experience them when they need them.

Prevention must extend beyond Women's Month and the 16 Days of Activism. If our institutional response becomes most visible during commemorative months and less visible in the ordinary routines of residence life, student leadership, classrooms, sporting spaces and online communities, we should ask whether we are changing culture or simply demonstrating that we know how to campaign against it.

The women whose bodies were found in Ekurhuleni deserve more than our outrage. Their families deserve justice. Women living in fear deserve more than advice about avoiding becoming the next victim. Survivors deserve more than sympathy after systems have failed them.

For those of us in student affairs and student development, this responsibility is particularly immediate. We are often closest to students' lived realities: in residences, student leadership, counselling and psychosocial support, disability support, sport, student organisations and the everyday spaces in which campus culture is formed. Our proximity to students must translate into institutional action. Standing up must mean acting where we have responsibility and influence: challenging conduct we once ignored, strengthening institutions, holding perpetrators accountable and building communities in which women’s freedom is not negotiated against the threat of violence.

When women tell us they are scared, our responsibility is not simply to listen.

It is to believe them, stand with them, challenge what we have normalised, and act where we have the power to act.

Because a society and a university cannot claim to be committed to human dignity while fear determines how women are expected to live, study and move through the world. DM