Ekurhuleni murders force SA to ask how it produces killers

The discovery of at least nine murdered women in Ekurhuleni has once again forced South Africa to confront the terror women live with every day.

The public conversation has understandably turned to the possibility of a serial killer, to police capacity, to missing-persons systems and to the urgent need for arrests.

Those questions matter. Families deserve answers, communities deserve safety, and women deserve a state that responds with speed and seriousness.

But if the national debate stops at the hunt for one monster, we will have missed the point. The frightening truth about gender-based violence is that it is rarely committed by strangers.

It is often committed by men who were once boys in our homes, schools, churches, taxis, sports fields and streets; boys who learnt what manhood is supposed to look like.

South Africa’s statistics show that the crisis is not episodic, but structural. The latest reports cited by the South African Human Rights Commission say 569 women were killed between April and June, while thousands of rape cases were reported in the same period.

The Ekurhuleni killings are therefore not an exception to our national story. They are an extreme expression of a culture that still makes women negotiate fear as part of ordinary life.

This country is very good at outrage after women die, but less disciplined about preventing boys becoming dangerous men.

One side demands tougher policing, longer sentences and better investigations. Another side speaks of patriarchy, poverty, trauma and toxic masculinity. These are connected parts of the same problem.

Yes, perpetrators must be arrested and punished. But punishment after the fact does not teach a 12-year-old boy how to handle rejection without humiliation, anger without violence, love without control, or desire without entitlement.

Courts cannot be the first institution to teach men that women are fully human. By the time the criminal justice system becomes involved, too much damage has already been done.

The work must begin earlier. Parents, guardians and extended families have to stop raising boys as little kings whose feelings are serviced by women.

Schools must teach consent, emotional literacy, conflict resolution and respect with the same seriousness they teach mathematics. Coaches, pastors, uncles, older brothers and community leaders must stop excusing cruelty as “boys being boys”.

This is not about hating men or treating every boy as a potential criminal. It is about loving boys enough to free them from a script that harms everyone.

There are already examples of this. Programmes that engage boys and men on positive masculinity, mentoring, consent and non-violent conflict resolution. But they remain too peripheral.

Prevention cannot be a workshop during 16 Days of Activism or a donor-funded pilot that disappears when the grant ends. It should be a national project, funded and measured with the same urgency as policing operations.

The Ekurhuleni killings demand justice. But justice must mean more than finding the perpetrator/s in this case.

It must ask why so many men see women as disposable, why communities ignore warning signs, why families protect abusive sons, and why girls are still taught to shrink their lives, while boys are not taught to govern theirs.

If SA’s national conversation is centred only on the possible serial killer, it is not centred enough. The deeper question is not who killed these women. It is what kind of society keeps producing men who can.