When the death of Hillary Gardee hit the headlines this week, we were once again reminded that cases of gender-based violence and femicide continue to rise.
Gardee, the daughter of former EFF secretary-general Godrich Gardee, was found dead with head injuries on Tuesday outside Mbombela, Mpumalanga, after four days of being missing.
She was last seen when she went shopping with her three-year-old daughter on April 29. The child was later found stranded and unharmed in the streets.
It's not known how Gardee was killed yet, but SA's GBV and femicide cases are rated as one of the highest in the world. The 2021/2022 second quarter crime statistics showed that 897 women had been murdered in that period, a 7.7% hike from the previous year's 833.
The country has been plagued by GBV for years, leading to President Cyril Ramaphosa calling it the second pandemic in 2020. This was during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Despite several measures put in place to fight the scourge, we are yet to see a drop in the number of women and children killings which has caused a lot of pain and frustration for the public.
On Wednesday, we saw an emotional EFF leader Julius Malema promising to find the killers during his visit to the Gardee home.
“We have committed to the family to find these killers and we have committed to Bheki Cele [police minister] as well that he must find them before we find them because if we find them before him, we will not give him any guarantee on what is going to happen,” Malema said.
We are all frustrated by the killings of women and children in our country, but Malema's statements were reckless and irresponsible. As a leader, he cannot be seen to be encouraging people to take the law into their own hands.
His followers are known for carrying out instructions of leadership to the end, as we saw with them occupying Clicks outlets across the country after a controversial advert by the chain shop a while back.
Malema's public utterances were also at a bad time, taking into consideration the recent acts of vigilantism which claimed the life of Zimbabwean Elvis Nyathi, who got killed for failing to produce a passport in Diepsloot, northern Johannesburg.
We call on Malema to retract his statements and commit to handing the perpetrators to the police, if they catch them first. Allow the police to do their job.
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