On several occasions before she was killed, Amanda Kosani was seen battered and bruised, once with a split lip and another time with a black eye she covered with makeup.
And though those close to her knew she was in danger, their attempts to save Kosani‘s life failed.
The 37-year-old died in an outside room at the Newrest informal settlement in Nemato in Port Alfred, Eastern Cape, where she was visiting relatives on Women’s Day.
Her 40-year-old boyfriend was arrested at the scene the following morning and charged with her murder.
Kosani’s brutal killing came in the month South Africa sets aside to honour women, and in the province where a woman is most likely to be raped or murdered.
Six women killed a day
Kosani was one of several women killed in SA this Women’s Month.
Police statistics for the first quarter of the financial year, released on Friday, show 569 women were murdered in South Africa between April and June and another 1,052 survived attacks.
Women and children made up 8,814 of the 9,201 rape victims recorded over the three months, or 96%.
Most of those rapes happened where the victim or the attacker lived, with 4,121 of the 6,596 cases sampled by police taking place at a residence against 1,462 in a public place.
The Eastern Cape rape rate stands at 22.3 per 100,000 people against a national rate of 14.5, and the province’s murder rate at 15.8 against 8.5 nationally.
The province recorded 1,476 rapes between April and June, exactly the same number as in the same three months last year.
Of those, 112 were domestic violence rapes, and 37 people were murdered in domestic violence cases in the province over the quarter.
Nationally, 193 people were murdered and 871 raped in domestic violence cases.
Acting police minister Firoz Cachalia said crimes against women and children had gone up over the quarter even as murder, carjacking and house robbery came down.
“Gender-based violence and femicide continues to demand urgent attention from every sector of society,” Cachalia said.
Taymin Platt, 24, a traffic warden, was stabbed to death at a flat in Eersterust, Pretoria, on August 1. Her 25-year-old boyfriend has been arrested.
Roll call of death
Taymin Platt, a 24-year-old traffic warden, was stabbed to death at a flat in Eersterust, Pretoria, on the very first day of the month, allegedly at the hands of her 25-year-old boyfriend.
According to police, Platt was sitting with friends when her boyfriend arrived and an argument broke out.
A gender-based violence case involving Platt had been opened before her death and was never finalised.
A week later, Josephine Tshabalala, 37, was last seen in the early hours of August 8 in Orlando East, Soweto.
Her body was found in her room on August 13 with a stab wound and multiple bruises.
Simiso Silomo Phakathi, 27, who shared the room with her, was arrested in Klerksdorp on August 19 after police circulated his photograph, and appeared in the Orlando Magistrate’s Court two days later on a murder charge.
Amogelang Motshwaedi, 15, was killed at Dinokana village near Zeerust, allegedly by her boyfriend, and a 17-year-old was arrested.
In another incident, a 36-year-old woman was shot dead near Tweeling in the Free State on August 18 after she left work in Reitz and got into a vehicle, not knowing her former boyfriend was inside and had planned to attack her, police said.
The man died in a shootout with police and IPID is investigating.
Meanwhile, police in Moeka Vuma near Makapanstad in North West are looking for James Mohajane, 41, who is wanted for the murders of his girlfriend, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, whose bodies were found at a house on Sunday.
Roleen Lessing and Jaydin Margerman were killed in the Reiger Park shooting that also claimed the lives of two anti-gang unit members.
In Kosani’s case, police spokesperson Captain Marius McCarthy said she arrived at the outside room where she lived on her relative’s premises on the Sunday night.
Later that evening her boyfriend walked up to a group of people at a local drinking spot and asked them to call an ambulance because he had injured his girlfriend.
Nobody went to check on her.
“The witnesses did not take the request seriously at the time, dismissing it due to the couple’s history of domestic disputes, combined with the fact that they were consuming alcohol,” McCarthy said.
“The grim discovery was made the following morning, Monday, August 10, at approximately 6.30am.”
A relative saw the boyfriend creeping out of the room, went in and found Kosani lying motionless on the bed.
The relative alerted the community, who called police and summoned the boyfriend back to the scene.
Police found Kosani’s body on the bed, secured forensic evidence and recovered the weapon suspected of inflicting her fatal injuries hidden inside the blankets.
The boyfriend was arrested and is due to appear in the Port Alfred Magistrate’s Court.
Sarah Baartman district commissioner Major-General Thandiswa Kupiso said it was sickening that a young woman was killed by her partner while the country was marking the strength and value of women.
“SAPS assures the community that our detectives will build a watertight case to ensure this perpetrator faces the full might of the law,” Kupiso said.
Her cousin Xolelwa Baku said the family found out the next day and she went straight to the settlement.
“We were incredibly shocked when we learned she had been killed,” Baku, 29, said, adding her friend told her what had happened.
“I was still under my blankets as it was early in the morning. I ran to where she had been, and the people who had seen her said she was not in good shape at all. The grief is still lingering and it will not pass for a long time. The entire family is shattered.”
Baku said she had never met the boyfriend and would see him for the first time when he appears in court.
She said Kosani had told the family that when the two of them argued, he would tell her they needed to be apart so things would not escalate.
“I think everyone sees when a relationship is not healthy and heading towards abuse. You can see how a person acts, including the way in which they speak.”
A close friend said she had seen Kosani injured many times.
“It went on like this for a long time,” the friend said.
“She was beaten badly in that relationship.
“He was so controlling. I once saw her with a black eye and she had to patch it up with makeup.”
Thina Bahlali People’s Movement said women were being killed in Port Alfred week after week and the town had stopped treating it as an emergency.
“We cannot continue to respond to each killing with shock, condolences and outrage, only to move on until the next woman loses her life,” the organisation said.
“Something is seriously wrong when the loss of women becomes a recurring occurrence in our community. We cannot celebrate women in public while, behind closed doors, women continue to live in fear.
“How many more women must die before we treat this as the emergency that it is?”
Development economist Nthabiseng Moleko said women were being attacked in their homes by men they knew, not by strangers in the street.
“It’s not about danger in the streets,” Moleko said.
“It’s about danger around people known to victims and also within relationships and household acquaintances.”
Moleko, a senior lecturer in economics and statistics at Stellenbosch Business School and a former deputy chairperson of the Commission for Gender Equality, said men had been raised to reach for violence when they were angry, rejected or under pressure, and that this described a minority of men.
“This is not the majority of men,” Moleko said.
“I want to repeat, this is not the majority of men.
“There are many men that reject violence against women and children, and it’s not a narrative where the majority of men are like this.”
North-West University deputy vice-chancellor Linda du Plessis said praising women was not the same as protecting them.
“Women today do not only need to be praised for their strength and resilience,” Du Plessis said.
“They need institutions and communities in which they are safe, respected and able to participate fully.
“The continuing levels of gender-based violence show that harmful ideas about gender and power remain embedded in parts of society.”
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