Women’s Month Celebrates Women, The Rest of The Year Must Protect Them
- Briefly News' 2026 Women of Wonder campaign reached over 2.4 million people in August, celebrating inspirational South African women across various industries
- Just weeks later, 11 female bodies were discovered in Ekurhuleni over a 10-week period, with eight found in September alone
- Data from the South African Medical Research Council shows an average of three women are killed by partners daily, while broader national figures reflect 15 femicides every single day
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For the past five years, every August, Briefly News has told the stories of women who have built careers, led industries and changed lives.
This year, our Women of Wonder project reached more than 2.4 million people, who read, shared and cheered for trailblazing women making their mark in the male-dominated motor industry.
Weeks later, our headlines read differently. Eleven women's bodies have been found around Johannesburg since mid-July, eight of them in September alone.
The most recent were found near Mooifontein Cemetery in Tembisa and beside a railway line in Springs. Most of the women were in their 20s and 30s. Some were found in open fields, near cemeteries, and along railway lines, and many were left partially undressed.
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What I felt as an editor
I run a remote newsroom, so I don't watch these stories arrive across a room. They arrive on my screen, one alert at a time. In August that screen was full of pride. In September it filled with police statements and the same sentence repeated: another body found.
I won't pretend I have a polished reaction. What I felt was grief, followed closely by a question I couldn't shake: what good is celebrating women if we can't help them survive?
The women we honoured had survived, built, led and created. The women in the September headlines were denied the chance to do the same.
Women's Month is not a safety plan
Celebration and protection are different things. Tributes are cheap. Safety costs money, enforcement and sustained attention.
The language of August is empowerment, tribute and wonder. The reality of September is that South African women are being killed, often by men they know.
The most recent national femicide study, conducted by the South African Medical Research Council, found that three women were killed every day by an romantic partner in 2020 and 2021.
Investigators are still working out whether the Ekurhuleni killings are connected, and the provincial police chief has cautioned that there is no conclusive evidence tying them to one person or group. We will not speculate, and neither should anyone else.
But we don't need a verdict to say what is already true: the country has a crisis on its hands. In late 2025, after more than a million people signed a petition and women shut down the country, the government declared gender-based violence and femicide a national disaster. Declarations are a beginning but what truly matters is what follows.
The media's part in this
Women's Month coverage and crime coverage shouldn't be two different genres. We know where the habits that let women down tend to creep in: passive headlines that leave out who did what to whom, lingering detail about a victim's clothing or state of undress, and coverage that fades once the funeral is over.
The research suggests the problem runs deeper than any one outlet. A masterclass hosted by the Media Development and Diversity Agency found that only 16% of TV news stories on GBV told audiences where to get help.
That study focused on radio and television, but broader monitoring of digital coverage, including work from North-West University, points to similar flaws online. Incidents are isolated from their wider social, economic and historical context and written up as sensational crime rather than a public health crisis.
Most online articles carry no content warning, despite the web giving us all the space we need. Links to support organisations are more common online, but Media Monitoring Africa notes they remain inconsistent, left to individual discretion rather than built into how we work.
Social media cuts both ways. It has sustained anti-GBV campaigns and lets survivors bypass gatekeepers and demand accountability.
Yet the comment sections beneath news posts, including routine GBV statistic updates from major broadcasters, are too often filled with victim-shaming, trivialisation and attempts to derail. Publishing a story doesn't end our responsibility for what happens beneath it.
Violence itself is also moving online, through harassment, cyberstalking, the non-consensual sharing of private images and AI-generated content abuse. Reporting on it is becoming part of the job.
I say this not to point fingers at colleagues who report these stories with care, often in real time and under pressure, but because news is one of the few tools we have to keep a story alive after the outrage fades. If reporting can inform, it can also protect.
What we owe them
There is no rulebook for this, but there is a direction of travel, and newsrooms, ours included, can play a part in making a positive change.
It starts with staying with the story. A woman's death should not disappear from coverage once the first alert has run. Following a case as it moves through the system keeps attention on the investigation and the justice system's response, and it keeps her name and story in public view for longer than a news cycle.
It also means saying plainly what happened. Headlines can name the act of violence and avoid vague, passive phrasing that leaves out who did what to whom, and precise language, including the word rape when that is what it was, helps the public understand the different forms this violence takes.
It also means treating victims as full people and readers as people who may be hurting. Coverage can lead with who a woman was, with her family's consent, rather than what she wore or where she was found.
Content warnings and information on where to get help can accompany these stories, and care can be taken over the conversation that follows them online.
None of this is complicated, but it takes consistency, and consistency is where good intentions tend to slip. That is a reason to keep asking ourselves the question, not a reason to stay quiet about it.
After August
I keep going back to those August stories, to the pride and the joy of watching women be celebrated. Those women deserved their August. So did every woman we've ever featured. And so did the eleven women found in Ekurhuleni, who deserved the ordinary decades the rest of us are counting on.
Let's keep asking what more we can do, in September and every month after. If you or someone you know needs help, call the GBV Command Centre on 0800 428 428, free and available 24 hours a day.
Source: Original
How can men help protect women and children?
Briefly News earlier reported on the Kwa-Thema march against gender-based violence and femicide, where men’s organisations, sports clubs and civic groups called for men to help protect women and children.
The march followed the discovery of eleven women’s bodies across Ekurhuleni in nine weeks, a series of killings that has prompted outrage and renewed concern over violence against women.
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Source: Briefly News
