Gauteng MEC for economic development, in his capacity as acting provincial premier, has called on men to condemn “cowardice” of women abuse.
Lebogang Maile was on Saturday, 28 December, visiting the family of a Gauteng crime warden allegedly killed by her boyfriend in Eldorado Park.
Chesnay Patricia Keppler, 22, was allegedly shot by her 42-year-old boyfriend in her home on Christmas Eve.
She had locked herself in the house
Keppler had barricaded herself, allegedly fleeing her violent boyfriend.
It is alleged the boyfriend came to her home intoxicated and took her out to his car where he assaulted her. She escaped his grasp and fled to her home where she locked herself in.
The police officer boyfriend is then alleged to have taken out his service pistol and shot her through the window. She was later pronounced dead at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital.
Maile told the crowd of mourners outside her home on Saturday that South Africans had lived through three pandemics.
Woman abuse is a pandemic
“We have always said that we have lived under three pandemics—we have lived under HIV/Aids pandemic, we have lived under COVID. Now there’s this pandemic that is stubborn, which refuses to die. So it requires all of us, especially men, to be at the forefront of confronting it. Because it can’t be right that everyday there is a story about a woman who is abused, a woman who is killed. It can’t be right that everyday women don’t feel safe even in their own home.”
He said all men must rise up and say “not in our name”.
GBV is unforgivable
Maile said it would have been an injustice had the suspect succeeded in ending his own life after the incident. “And we prayed in that meeting that he does not die because that will be the easy way out,” he said.
“We would want him to face the consequences. What he has done is unforgivable, what he has done is unexplainable, it is not understandable. It must never be accepted in our community because we always say that men must protect women.”
Condemn cowardice
Maile implored men to attend the suspect’s first court appearance to voice their disapproval of gender-based violence.
“We have called on the men, us, on the day of the court appearance, to be in the forefront. It is us who must condemn this cowardice.”
The suspect is under arrest and expected to appear in the Protea Magistrate’s Court on Monday 30 December.
