Cyril Ramaphosa calls family meeting to address Ekurhuleni murders

President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced that government will, in a few days, address the nation on the steps it is taking to confront gender-based violence (GBV), and update South Africans on the investigation into the killings of women in and around Ekurhuleni.

President Ramaphosa made the announcement at the National Heritage Day celebrations at Bongolethu Sports Stadium in Oudtshoorn, Western Cape, on Thursday.

This follows the discovery of nine bodies of women in Gauteng’s Ekurhuleni and surrounding areas over the past two months.

READ | Ekurhuleni murders: Forensics link persons of interest to victims

‘Women have the right to walk streets of SA’

In his address, President Ramaphosa declared that the abuse, rape and killing of women cannot be regarded as part of South Africa’s heritage, saying women have the right to walk the streets of their country at any hour without fear.

“The abuse, rape and killing of women is not our heritage. There is no culture worthy of the name that diminishes the dignity of women.”

He said the pain and suffering that the women of South Africa have been put through stands out as a national shame.

The President said the country’s celebration of its heritage must confront the realities that affect the daily lives of South Africans, particularly the unequal experience of freedom and safety.

“It is profoundly unequally lived by a man who can walk the streets without fear, and a woman who must constantly consider whether she will be safe.”

Response to violence against women

Cyril Ramaphosa also used the Heritage Day platform to make a declaration on the country’s response to violence against women, maintaining that violence against women will not be part of the inheritance left to the next generation.

He said strengthening the ties that bind South Africans requires the country to address the gaps between the lived experiences of its people.

The President noted that freedom is not equally experienced by people living in safe communities and those living with the fear of crime, or by young people with access to education and opportunities and those whose circumstances denied them such opportunities.

He challenged South Africans to build a country which is safe for all people, where there is dignity, and where government serves its people.

“A country where there is work. Where business can invest, where workers prosper, [and] where children learn.”

Common enemy

Ramaphosa also called on South Africans to guard against forces that seek to undermine national unity.

In the past, he said the country’s common enemy was apartheid, and the enemy today is unemployment, GBV, corruption, and alcohol and drug abuse.  

“We must tackle these problems together, like our forebears did when they fought side by side until they defeated apartheid.  Our common cause today is bringing about the conditions in which every South African can truly live the freedom that was promised them in 1994,” he said.