The murder of two cousins, Tshiamo, 22 and Baleseng Moramaga, 21, in Mamelodi East on October 26, has forced the nation once again to confront the persistent scourge of intimate partner violence.
The alleged perpetrator, Tebogo Mnisi (38), reportedly a tavern bouncer and partner to one of the victims, has become the face of yet another tragedy rooted in the toxic intersection of alcohol abuse, patriarchal power and access to guns.
Research suggests that South Africa has 2.5-4 million illegal guns in circulation, exceeding the number of legally owned ones. Many of these weapons are lost or stolen guns, or looted from state armouries, or smuggled into the country through crime networks.
As the nation reels from shock, outrage and anger over the murder of the cousins, it is difficult not to shift focus to the deeper structural and historical forces that continue to enable such violence.
Between 2012 and 2014, I conducted doctoral research in Mamelodi East that examined the relationship between alcohol consumption and domestic violence in township settings. At that time, the Moramaga cousins would have been no older than 10 or 11 years old – growing up in a social landscape already defined by hardship, gendered inequalities and limited opportunity.
The research participants repeatedly emphasised that alcohol played a central role in many instances of intimate partner violence. But they also highlighted that it was not alcohol alone that aided the situation; it was the environment that sustained it.
Townships such as Mamelodi remain spaces of limited socio-economic mobility and scarce recreational infrastructure. In many sections of Mamelodi, taverns (or shebeens) are among the visible gathering spaces for young adults. Churches and spaza shops form the rest of the social landscape.
For many, drinking becomes a form of escape from their realities, a form of entertainment and a means of belonging. It is a ritual of community life that often masks despair.
This environment, built on inequality and deprivation, normalises a social pattern in which male dominance, alcohol abuse and violence intertwine.
In such spaces, gender-based violence becomes both visible and invisible: visible in its public manifestations such as screams, injuries and police sirens but invisible in its normalization and collective silence.
What has changed in Mamelodi, however, is the escalation of violence. My study recorded patterns of violence and control; the current trend increasingly involves murder.
The killing of the Moramaga cousins is not an isolated event; it is part of a growing pattern of fatal violence within relationships across South African townships.
This shift demands urgent reflection. It reveals how deeply entrenched social ills, alcohol dependency, illegal guns, and patriarchy have converged into a volatile mix.
Each femicide, each tragic death, becomes both a personal loss and a collective indictment of a society that continues to fail its women.
Despite more than three decades of democracy, township life still reflects the unfinished business of liberation.
When alcohol consumption becomes a marker of social success, and masculinity remains tethered to control and dominance, communities such as Mamelodi remain trapped in cycles of self-destruction.
It has been more than three decades since the dawn of democracy, yet the promise of dignity and equality remains elusive for many in the townships.
The glorification of excessive drinking, often equated with success, masculinity and celebration, persists while the social cost is measured in the loss of the lives of women and children.
If we are to honour the memory of Tshiamo and Baleseng, we must confront the uncomfortable truth that alcoholism is not merely an individual weakness but a structural and cultural wound. It is sustained by poverty, gender inequality and a lack of mental health support.
The crisis of intimate partner murders cannot be addressed through law enforcement alone. It also requires a holistic social intervention – investment in community infrastructure, strict regulation of taverns, accessible rehabilitation programmes and, above all, a cultural reimagining of what it means to be a man, a partner and a community member in post-apartheid South Africa.
The deaths of Tshiamo and Baleseng should not fade into the background noise of the ongoing gender-based violence epidemic.
They should compel us to confront uncomfortable truths. One such truth is that the townships remain both a product and a prisoner of its history, and that without addressing alcohol abuse, illegal guns and entrenched patriarchy, we risk losing yet another generation to violence that is, by now, tragically predictable.
Until then, the screams of the next victim will continue to echo through our townships, unheard, unheeded and unhealed.
