Kempton Park runners hand police a memorandum after nine women are killed in Ekurhuleni

Runners have handed a memorandum to Kempton Park Police Station calling for a safer environment for people who run, after nine women were killed in different parts of Ekurhuleni.

One of the nine was Elizabeth Moselakgomo, a runner known as Tsontso. The memorandum was delivered by Running With Sole, the group founded by Tumi Sole, and it was received at the station that carries the heaviest reported caseload in the province.

The names read out at the station

Sole said the group came to stand with the families and to say the country is facing an epidemic of gender based violence.

“This country is experiencing an epidemic of GBV and we are here to take a stand,” Sole said. “More importantly, we are here to send condolences to the families of Tsontso, Itemeleng Kekana, Gracious Nkomo and all the ladies that are yet to be named.”

The memorandum records the group’s central complaint. Kempton Park Police Station has the highest number of reported cases in the province, and Sole said nothing is being done about it.

“We are saying we have so many laws in this country that ought to be enforced and that should be done,” he said.

That is the sharpest line in the memorandum, and it is worth stating plainly. South Africa has the legislation. The Domestic Violence Act, the Sexual Offences Act and the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act are all on the statute book. The question the runners put to the station is why the enforcement does not match the law.

What the memorandum asks for

The demands are practical and they are municipal as much as they are police matters. Sole named streetlights and potholes.

“The city needs to fix the streetlights. They need to fix the potholes where services, people around, people walk, go to work,” he said.

Broken lighting and unrepaired roads are not abstract complaints. They are the conditions under which women walk to work before dawn and return after dark, and they are the conditions under which a runner uses a pavement. The City of Ekurhuleni owns both the lights and the roads.

Sole put the wider point directly. “Any of the women here may be next and I think it’s time that the state law and the city do everything that it can to protect them.”

He added that the country should not wait for a death before it acts. “We think it shouldn’t take someone’s death for there to be action within the country and the likes.”

What the station has, and what happens next

The memorandum has been handed over. The next dated step is the station’s response to the group, and the enforcement record that follows from it.

The South African Police Service has a Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences unit structure, and the province runs a dedicated gender based violence and femicide command. Where those units are resourced and where cases move to the National Prosecuting Authority, the record shows convictions. The runners are asking for that machinery to work in Kempton Park at the rate the caseload demands.

For the families of the nine women, the memorandum changes nothing about the loss. For the women who run the same routes and walk the same streets, it puts a demand on the record: that the laws already passed are used, that the lights are fixed, and that the next name read out at a police station is not read out after a death.

Source: eNCA, SA is experiencing a GBV epidemic - Tumi Sole