In less than a week, two Nelson Mandela Bay women were found buried in shallow graves in different parts of the city.
In both cases, the women’s boyfriends have been arrested and charged with murder.
Pregnant 15-year-old Sinthia Williams and 42-year-old Vicky Terblanche did not know each another.
Sinthia’s remains were found in the backyard of her boyfriends’ grandparents’ house in Bauhinia Crescent in Thomas Gamble, Kariega, while Terblanche’s body was discovered in Greenbushes.
According to the police, Terblanche’s boyfriend had reported her missing on Thursday, and after he and another man were questioned on Friday, officers located her body in the early hours of Saturday.
This was only four days after police confirmed Sinthia’s death at the Bauhinia Crescent property.
It is not only that these women met such a violent end.
The sheer callousness of the alleged perpetrators in disposing of their remains in this way speaks to a mindset that cares very little for the lives of others, or that these women had family and friends who loved them.
Concealing their deaths as quickly as possible was all that mattered.
SAPS officers in Nelson Mandela Bay should be commended for acting so swiftly in making arrests, but the murders of Williams and Terblanche have highlighted that despite innumerable campaigns and efforts by the government to expedite criminal cases, creating awareness around gender-based violence and its consequences is simply not enough.
Neither of the men arrested in the two cases is older than 32, which is disturbing in itself.
It is widely held that younger generations are more in tune with the rights of others, so how can it be that such atrocities against women have been or allegedly are being committed by members of this age group?
Christopher Panayiotou was in his late 20s when his wife Jade was kidnapped and killed.
The brazen nature of the women’s murders, and the fact that whoever committed them was convinced they could get away with these crimes, suggests human empathy is being replaced by violent narcissism.
If gender-based violence is truly to be eradicated, the authorities need to find out why this is and address it before more lives are lost.
HeraldLIVE