Men offer to patrol streets free as police back anti-GBV call in Johannesburg

Men in Johannesburg have offered to stand watch through the night, unpaid, so that women can walk their streets safely, and have taken that offer to a police station and a court to say so in person.

The activist behind the call is Nkosikhona Ndabandaba, known publicly as Phakela Umthakathi. His position is that the fight against gender-based violence and femicide cannot be left to government and law enforcement alone, and that men who stay silent while women are killed are part of the problem. The call was carried by eNCA.

“We are coming here to say our women must feel safe, our young boys and young girls must feel safe, even the weak and sick must feel safe,” Ndabandaba said. “We need to build a community where we don’t judge the situation by the death of women only, but we judge the situation by the violence that is going on in the country, because on both sides, on females and males, there is violence.”

The offer, and who it was made to

The engagement was not a march and not a petition. Ndabandaba said the men came to a police station and to a court to affirm the police and to place themselves at the service of the community.

“But on this case where women are being brutally killed like this, we are saying as men, we can’t stand aside and look and watch and say it’s a fight for the government,” he said. “We are actually coming to this police station, to this court, to affirm the police that they have our support. You know that the police can’t work without the community, and we are offering ourselves as men, for free, to help wherever we can help.”

The commitment he attached to that offer is specific. “If we have to stay awake day and night to make sure that our women are walking safely on the streets, we will do that. We are coming to offer ourselves for the community.”

Why community involvement is not a courtesy

The South African Police Service has repeatedly said that community cooperation is central to its work, and the men’s approach reflects that reality rather than a criticism of it. Cases of gender-based violence are frequently reported by neighbours, family members and community structures before they ever reach a charge office, and the quality of that relationship often determines whether a case proceeds at all.

What Ndabandaba is proposing goes further than reporting. It is an offer of manpower, of presence on the streets at night, and of a standing relationship with the police rather than a once-off gesture. That is a harder promise to keep than to make, and the value of it will be measured over months rather than in a single appearance outside a police station.

What the record shows about the scale

The context for the call is not in dispute. South Africa records high numbers of women killed by men known to them, and the country has built a legal framework around it, including the Domestic Violence Act and the Sexual Offences Act, precisely because the criminal law alone has not been enough. The state’s response has included specialised family violence, child protection and sexual offences units within the police, and courts designated to hear sexual offences cases.

Where those structures work, they work because communities use them. Where they fail, it is often because a victim does not report, does not know where to go, or does not believe the system will act. A group of men willing to walk women home and to sit with a case through a court process addresses that gap directly.

The pressure that remains

The offer does not replace the state’s duty. Policing, prosecution and the courts remain the responsibility of the state, and no citizen group can take over that work. What men can do is refuse to be bystanders, and that is what was said outside the police station.

Ndabandaba’s framing is deliberately wider than femicide alone. He argues that violence in South Africa runs in both directions and that a community which only reacts when a woman is killed is reacting too late. “We need to build a community where we don’t judge the situation by the death of women only,” he said.

Whether the offer translates into a standing arrangement with the local police station, and whether other men’s groups take it up, is the next thing to watch. The test will be whether the men are still outside the police station in six months, and whether the women who walk those streets at night notice the difference.

Source: eNCA, Phakel’uMthakathi challenges men to step up