Free SA is deeply concerned by warnings from the South African Police Service urging women in and around Kempton Park not to walk or run alone following the disturbing deaths of eight women in the broader area.
While sensible precautions during an active threat may be understandable, such warnings cannot become a substitute for effective policing. Government’s responsibility is to make our streets safe, apprehend violent criminals and ensure that South Africans can exercise their basic freedoms without living in constant fear.
The answer to violent crime cannot be to progressively restrict the lives of law-abiding citizens.
Reports indicate that eight women have been found dead in the broader Kempton Park and R21 area over the past two months. Police have established a multidisciplinary task team and are investigating whether some or all of the deaths are connected. Authorities have not yet confirmed that the cases involve a serial killer.
Against this deeply disturbing backdrop, women have been advised not to walk or run alone, particularly in isolated areas, and to travel or exercise in groups where possible.
Gideon Joubert, spokesperson for Free SA, said:
“When government tells ordinary people that they should not walk or run alone because our streets are unsafe, it is effectively asking law-abiding citizens to surrender their freedom because the state cannot adequately protect them. That is an extraordinarily dangerous message.”
Free SA believes government must be careful not to shift the burden of violent crime from criminals and the institutions responsible for combating them onto potential victims.
Citizens should certainly remain vigilant when there is a credible threat. But there is an important difference between issuing temporary safety advice during an active investigation and accepting a society in which women must permanently alter their lives because government cannot guarantee basic public safety.
“South Africans cannot become prisoners inside their own homes,” Joubert continued. “A woman should be able to go for a run. A worker should be able to walk home. A student should be able to travel through her community. People should be able to use public spaces without being told that exercising these ordinary freedoms is simply too dangerous.”
The freedom to move through one’s community without fear is fundamental to a free society. When violent criminals determine where citizens may walk, when they may exercise and whether they may travel alone, it is the criminal, not the citizen, who has been granted control over public space.
Free SA welcomes the deployment of specialised police resources to investigate these deaths and calls for the investigation to be pursued with the utmost urgency. Those responsible must be identified, arrested and prosecuted.
But government must go further. Communities need visible and effective policing, functioning street lighting and public infrastructure, rapid investigation of violent crime, and a criminal justice system capable of removing dangerous offenders from society.
“The state exists, among other things, to protect the rights and security of its citizens,” Joubert concluded. “Government cannot respond to its failure to keep public spaces safe by telling citizens to retreat from those spaces. Our streets belong to peaceful, law-abiding South Africans, not to murderers, predators and violent criminals.”
Free SA extends its deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the women who have lost their lives.