More than 3,000 women were murdered between April 2021 and March 2022, according to official police crime stats. That is an average of nine women per day. 

It is the highest number of women murdered in a year since 2015, when the South African Police Service (SAPS) started reporting female homicide figures separately in their crime stats presentations. 

Women are more likely to be killed by an intimate partner

Close to 25,000 people were murdered in 2021/22 and by far the majority of the victims were men. Just over one in every 10 (13%) of the murders reported were of women. 

What distinguishes female murders is the likelihood that the victim was murdered by an intimate partner.

In a sample study by the SAPS, a woman was killed by her boyfriend in almost one in three cases and her husband in one out of four cases. 

Men, on the other hand, are more likely to be killed after arguments in taverns, during robberies, or because of gang, mob and taxi violence, according to the SAPS. 

South Africa’s  female homicide rate is the third highest in the world – 9.5 per hundred thousand people, according to the most recent United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime’s International Homicide Statistics, which uses information from national police departments. In comparison, the global average was two per 100,000 population.

The women behind the numbers

In 2020, we started to track media reports of women murdered in South Africa in a project for the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism.

To date, we have collected a list of over 900 murders that were reported in the media between January 2018 to October 2022. These represent a small percentage of the roughly 11,000 women murdered between 2018 and 2021.

In line with the police crime stats, the media reports show that one in four of the women victims were killed by their romantic partner. In almost half of the cases, the woman reportedly knew her killer. 

Media reports also show that one out of every four women murdered between 2018 and 2022 was shot dead. This is also in line with police crime stats, which show that firearms are the most common murder weapon. 

What the police crime stats don’t show us, but the media reports do is that two in every five women killed between 2018 and 2022 were between the ages of 20 and 39. 

Is there justice? 

The number of prosecutions of female homicide cases appears to be increasing. For example, in 2021/22, the National Prosecuting authority convicted killers in 316 intimate partner murder cases – an increase from 190 convictions the year before.