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SPACES: The Ekurhuleni deaths demand urgent precautions, but lasting prevention requires safer public spaces, stronger guardianship and greater accountability — not further restrictions on women’s lives…
By Tara Farrer Harris
The discovery of several women’s bodies across Ekurhuleni over the past two months has generated considerable fear and concern, particularly for women within the metropolitan area.
Investigations into the circumstances surrounding these deaths have been prioritised, but it would be premature to speculate that the cases are connected.
What isn’t speculative, however, is that violence against women remains pervasive in South Africa, and that the wider context of women’s safety within public spaces requires urgent attention.
The broader national context provides some indication of the extent of the problem. The results of the First South African National Gender-Based Violence Study, released in 2024, illustrate that 35.5% of women aged 18 years and older had experienced physical and/or sexual violence during their lifetime.
This represents about 7.85 million women residing in South Africa. Furthermore, South Africa records some of the highest levels of lethal violence against women globally, with the intimate-partner femicide rate of 5.5 per 100 000 women recorded in 2020/21 being almost five times the corresponding global average.
By their nature, statistics cannot adequately reflect the individual and collective repercussions of violence, but they can, to a degree, demonstrate the magnitude of the current concerns and provide a vital perspective for understanding violence against women and their safety.
A reactive response during the ongoing Ekurhuleni investigations and a recognition of potential risk to other women is necessary; women have therefore been encouraged to take heightened precautions.
All stakeholders would be acting irresponsibly if they suggested women disregard advice to be extra cautious, given the reasonable possibility of immediate risk of harm in the area. However, reactivity and its value to harm reduction and threat assessment cannot be treated as a sustainable approach to preventing violence against women.
Precautionary behaviours – including avoiding isolated areas, limiting travelling alone or after dark, remaining vigilant, sharing locations, altering movements or behaviours in response to perceived risk, and the “buddy system” – are inherent in how women negotiate public spaces and their safety within the public domain.
Individually, these strategies are sensible and remove opportunities for victimisation. But at a collective level, at what point do legitimate safety advice and mechanisms divert responsibility for managing the risk of violence onto the potential victim?
Routine activity theory proposes that predatory crimes arise when a vulnerable or suitable target, a motivated offender and a lack of capable guardianship converge in time and space. In this way, opportunities to commit crime are created.
Within the context of violence against women and reactive responses, the concept of a “suitable target” requires consideration. The behaviour of a female victim is often scrutinised, and emphasis is placed on what she may have done differently to prevent her victimisation, resulting in possible victim-blaming and reinforcing the rhetoric that women are responsible for their own safety.
The concern is that while all individuals have agency and can try to reduce their risk of victimisation, women are progressively having to take on greater responsibility for managing risk by restricting ordinary daily activities and routines.
Significantly, crime prevention cannot be built on accepting that women should have to limit and restrict their lives and access to public spaces because violence against them is anticipated and otherwise “unmanageable”. From this perspective, perhaps the question should shift from “why was she there?” to “why is it possible for an offender to act there?”
Such a shift moves the focus towards capable guardianship, which extends beyond police presence alone to include surveillance, environmental design, safer transport options, private security, community policing, and efficient reporting and response mechanisms. The emphasis then moves away from restricting women’s movements and placing unreasonable responsibility on them towards examining how environments can be made less conducive to offending.
The physical, emotional and social consequences of violence affect victims, their relatives and friends, and the community at large. The fear of victimisation alone can influence behaviour, and women are already well versed in adapting their behaviour, lifestyles and routines in response to perceived risk. The now heightened threat of violence may further restrict their mobility, independence and participation in public life.
The resulting danger is that such restrictions may gradually become normalised and accepted as an inevitable part of women’s lives. Consequently, the focus remains on how women can avoid victimisation, rather than on capable guardianship, safer environments, protection and offender accountability.
Individual risk management may provide some protection from victimisation, but sustainable primary and secondary crime prevention requires greater attention to offenders, offending opportunities, environmental conditions, and formal and informal guardianship. In essence, the solution to violence against women cannot simply be for women to become more proficient in avoiding danger.
The deaths of the women in Ekurhuleni require an urgent criminal justice response that highlights practical safety considerations and offers suggestions on how to reduce immediate exposure to risk. However, they also require us to critically reflect and consider a longer-term response in a country that continues to record some of the highest levels of violence against women. The answer cannot lie primarily in asking what women should do differently, but rather in reducing opportunities for offence, strengthening capable guardianship and making public spaces safer.
Ultimately, the responsibility for preventing violence against women cannot, and should not, predominantly lie with those at the greatest risk of experiencing it.
Dr Tara Farrer Harris is from the Department of Social Work and Criminology at the University of Pretoria
