SOWETAN SAYS | Our society is crushed by misogyny

Writing her profile for the Mail&Guardian 200 Young South Africans, Dorcas Didi Lekganyane describes how a walk through a muti market in 2014 enriched her perspective and awakened in her the responsibility to capture our indigenous knowledge and understanding of the healing properties of African herbs. 

“I was stung by the odour of what I describe as 'the smell of death', but this sensory excursion inspired my research project. I learnt that there was more life and untapped knowledge concentrated in that market, constantly being disregarded because of the stereotypes and social stigmas around the use of muti.” 

Her academic journey and exploratory work would earn her recognition as one of SA’s pioneers in environmental science. 

Last week, she was murdered. 

Lekganyane was found dead in her Bramley home in Johannesburg, with multiple stab wounds. Her partner was taken into custody. 

Her family is devastated. Her sister Lethabo has described harrowing hours in which her family tried in vain to get hold of Lekganyane after several missed calls to them by her partner on the morning she died. 

An investigation will, hopefully, eventually reveal the full picture of what happened. 

Whatever the circumstances, this is yet another brutal murder that reminds us that SA is one of the most dangerous places in the world for women to live. 

Lekganyane is one of several women we have reported about, just in recent months, who have died, allegedly at the hands of their partners. 

Intimate partner violence is a crisis out of control. Women and children are disproportionally unsafe in all spaces they occupy, not least of all, in their homes. 

The quality of life of a woman in SA is fundamentally poorer because of restrictions imposed by perpetual fear that defines her movement, her expression and her very existence. 

While we recognise that SA is a society in which violence is prevalent more broadly, the vulnerability of women and children, because of an entrenched culture of unhinged misogyny, cannot be disputed. 

Oftentimes we call on law enforcement to ensure that perpetrators of gender-based violence – or any violence for that matter – are brought to book. 

And here too, they must. 

But ultimately we must confront the fact that ours is a society crushed by violent misogyny.