Last Thursday, South Africans awoke to yet another gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) horror story. Ntokozo Xaba, a 21-year-old student enrolled in the national diploma in integrated communications programme at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), was brutally murdered inside her Ekhaya Junction residence in Pretoria Gardens.

According to the police, Xaba had spent the previous night doing the most banal thing – hanging out with her friends in her residence. It is reported that one of these was her ex-boyfriend, whom she was subsequently left alone with later at night when the friends returned to their own residences...