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The South African Communist Party (SACP) strongly condemns the abuse, attacks on and killing of women. We are calling on law enforcement authorities to leave no stone unturned to ensure justice for the women attacked and killed around Kempton Park and other parts of Ekurhuleni. As of Wednesday, eight women’s bodies were discovered. Most of the victims were found partially clothed near a highway. One lady reportedly escaped an attempted kidnapping in Kempton Park on Sunday night.

We convey our heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims. There is no excuse for the abuse, assault and murder of women, and for gender-based violence. The perpetrators must be hunted down and prosecuted for these crimes.

As the SACP, we support all efforts to bring justice for the victims, their families, women in general and society at large, including a specialised, multi-disciplinary task team to intensify the investigations. We appreciate the role played by our comrades in the Oupa Phasha District in Ekurhuleni in working with the community to raise awareness on these murders.

Crime, including violence and other crimes against women, is one of the most serious problems that severely impact victims, their families and communities under the exploitative and gendered dog-eat-dog domination and monopoly competition capitalist system. This takes place in a context characterised by neo-liberal policy failures, such as austerity – the budget cuts that have weakened the capacity of the police and other law enforcement authorities to perform their work effectively. 

Because of austerity, many police stations and communities, including in Kempton Park and Ekurhuleni at large, suffer from severe resource shortages, including a lack of patrol and emergency response capability, and an overstretched workforce that struggles to cope with the prevalence of crime, which has become unabated in certain categories.

Crime is therefore beyond simply a policing problem. It is also a system and an economic and social policy problem, including macro-economic policies such as fiscal policy, such as revenue policies and budget allocations. Meanwhile, crimes such as kidnapping, rape, other sexual assaults and forms of gender-based violence, including femicide, impose a heavy burden on women, families and communities. Economic and social policies that fail to take this into account are heartless, as the conditions they establish become the overall situation under which the perpetrators of these crimes find an enabling environment. 

Beyond calling on law enforcement authorities to leave no stone unturned and on the government to roll back policies such as austerity, to build a capable crime-fighting capacity, the SACP urges our communities to organise themselves in every locality and embark on social mobilisation and other community action. Through the People’s Red Caravan, which the SACP is leading, we have seen community-based cases of successful social mobilisation bringing down some of the worst crime levels and tackling crimes against women. Let us build this to become a nationwide movement in every community.

A truly free society must mean communities where people are free to move without any fear of criminal violation. Democracy cannot claim its rightful place in society as long as there are no-go zones for women, men, children and their families in communities.

Issued by South African Communist Party