Author Christine Mason Miller (Desire to Inspire) says: “At any given moment, you have the power to decide that this is not how the story going to end.”, but unfortunately in South Africa, if we speak about murder, then for most women, that is how their story is ended. What’s worse? A large portion of women have lives taken from them by the men they trust most.

Nearly 50% of all women who were murdered in South Africa were killed by their intimate partners. If you think about it in reverse, if husbands and boyfriends did not kill their female spouses, half of those who died by homicide may have been alive today to listen to this episode. There is clearly a war on women and their bodies in South Africa- but what is behind it? Does the criminal justice system aid in the perpetuation of femicide, or does it aid the fight against it?

Back again with us this week is Bulelwa Adonis, as she sheds light on the scourge of femicide plaguing South Africa today, and why despite all the efforts to bring an end to it, it seems to be getting worse. What hope do we have to end it once and for all? Join us today to find out.

Rape is commonplace in South Africa. It’s been reported that over 40% of women in South Africa are and will have reported to have been raped at least once in their lifetime. The crisis is so persistent that rape cases no longer make the news cycle alone, it takes celebrities and powerful people being raped for this social ill to get airtime. Yet, so many women fall victim to this heinous act. 

In this episode we seek to understand rape at 3 levels: 

• At a conceptual level, where we discuss issues of power and consent
• At a personal level, where we discuss issues of dignity, trauma and recovery 
• And at a societal level, where we discuss its broader societal harms, while perhaps tracking its history in order to give us a greater understanding of this crisis. 

We are joined today by activist Bulelwa Adonis, helps us unpack this issue by taking us through some of her research on rape in South Africa.

In this series, the conversations about masculinity have transcended many sub-categories in an attempt to better understand men around the world in various contexts. With the theme “Masculinity across borders”, we have now unearthed another conversation that has taken centre-stage, particularly in South Africa: immigration. The plight that is xenophobia has been a hot topic for a long time, as opposing views on immigration create divides that deter the lives of many immigrants, both legal and otherwise. Not moving from the conversation of masculinity, the bigger conversation to be had is about how one navigates their manhood in a foreign country, particularly with a violent history quite unkind to them.

In this episode, we talk to Gabriel Shamu, a young academic originally from Zimbabwe, but living in South Africa. He takes us on his journey of navigating life as a young black man in South Africa, dealing with expectations from family back home, South African society, as well as the men and women he has come across in various spaces.