Ekurhuleni killings: South Africa’s President Ramaphosa orders crackdown on unsafe streets to keep women safe

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday announced a clean-up of high-risk areas across the country, after the bodies of 12 women were discovered in an area east of Johannesburg in just two months.

The deaths sparked a national outcry about the scale of violence against women in South Africa, which has one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world.

Ramaphosa announced what he called a multidisciplinary, national-level emergency response to the murders, for which there have been four arrests.

He said gender-based violence “cannot be accepted as a normal part of life in South Africa” and admitted the country has “not done enough” to protect women and girls.