WeeklySA_AdminEPIDEMIC: Unabated slaughter of local men – close to 5 700 killed in three months this year – not highlighted ; example of ‘SA population’s desensitisation towards violence against men’…
By Len Maseko
South African men bear an enormous burden of murder, a trend that reflects their neglect in prevention and policy responses to violence, according to a research by the University of Cape Town.
The latest study, conducted by the UCT researchers together with the SA Medical Research Council (SAMRC), reveals that South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates against men – six times than the global average.
The research, titled South Africa’s male homicide epidemic hiding in plain sight: Exploring sex differences and patterns in homicide risk in a retrospective descriptive study of post-mortem investigations, examined post-mortem data for all deaths in 2017 from mortuaries located in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces.
UCT researcher Professor Richard Matzopoulos, who led the study, said there was a need to understand that many men were marginalised and vulnerable because of inequality and poverty, and that they were subject to overwhelming levels of interpersonal violence. Matzopolous is also honorary professor in UCT’s Division of Public Health Medicine and director of the SAMRC’s Burden of Disease Research Unit.
“We hope that our study – with the most recent, accurate and nationally representative data on injury mortality from any African country – helps to mobilise a strong, effective response to men’s massive homicide risk in South Africa,” said Matzopoulos.
The research’s alarm bells are supported by an unwitting omission of this fact in the presentation of the second-quarter (July to September 2023) crime statistics, by Police Minister General Bheki Cele last month. In his report, the Minister noted a 3.1 percent decline in murders between May and July, and a further drop – of 0.8 percent – in the number of people killed between July and September in South Africa.
Notably, Cele added, that despite the overall drop in the country’s murder rate, between July and September, 6 945 people were murdered in South Africa, adding that – out of the people killed during this period – 881 were women and 293 were children. This, without the Minister singularly highlighting the fact that a staggering 5 771 men murdered during this period, representing 83 percent of the total killings.
Approached for comment, Mbuyiselo Botha, a commissioner in the Commission on Gender Equality, said failure to highlight the reality that men bore the biggest brunt of criminal violence spoke “directly to how we, as a society, have normalised violence by men against men, and perpetuated the narrative that men must always be strong; they must take it in the chin’’.
Yet, in doing so, Botha added, “we tend not to see the connection between gender-based violence against women and that committed by men against other men, something that has been accepted as a norm in our society.
Rightly so, we should take notice of this phenomenon as a serious problem in our society. South Africans have acknowledged the scourge of violence by men against men as a norm, which is unacceptable behaviour”.
Globally, homicide is the third-leading cause of death for men aged 15-44, with the heaviest burden in low- and middle-income countries. South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates, six times the global average. In a study published in PLoS Global Public Health, the team compared male and female victim profiles from 2017 against global averages and 2009 estimates.
They conducted a retrospective descriptive study of routine post-mortem investigation data via a nationally representative survey of mortuaries sampled from eight of South Africa’s nine provinces for all deaths in 2017.
