Ramaphosa gives police and forensic teams 60 days to count unresolved GBVF cases

Sixty days. That’s the window President Cyril Ramaphosa gave South Africa’s police, forensic services and municipalities on Tuesday night to produce a number: how many unresolved murders, attempted murders, rapes and serious sexual offences involving women and children are sitting in the system, and how old they are. The real test starts after that count is done.

Speaking to the nation following the recent killings of women in and around Ekurhuleni, killings that have left affected communities fearful, Ramaphosa ordered immediate steps to strengthen the country’s gender-based violence and femicide response. The address split into two tracks: an active investigation into the Ekurhuleni deaths, and four system-wide directives with explicit deadlines attached.

Additional reference context is available at https://mg.co.za/news/south-africa/2026-09-29-ramaphosa-orders-urgent-action-as-ekurhuleni-killings-put-gbvf-response-under-scrutiny/.

On the investigation itself, Ramaphosa described an operation that has pulled together detectives, crime intelligence officers, forensic specialists, investigative psychologists and digital investigators to establish what happened and who is responsible. Arrests have already been made in some of the cases. Police have identified persons of interest and collected forensic material, including DNA, blood samples, clothing, cellphones and cellphone records. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research is assisting with the digital forensic side of the work.

The discovery of several bodies in close proximity had fuelled fears of a single perpetrator. Ramaphosa was direct on this point: police have found no evidence establishing the deaths were committed by one person, and all possibilities remain under investigation. He said the cases cannot be allowed to go cold, and appealed for public tips. Only two of the women found dead in Ekurhuleni had been reported missing, he noted, reminding the public there’s no requirement to wait 24 hours before filing a missing person report. A photograph, a vehicle registration number, a message, a phone call, he said, could become the piece of information that moves a case forward.

Then come the four structural measures. First: a national case recovery operation. Within 60 days, government must establish how many unresolved cases exist, their age, which are awaiting forensic evidence, which have identified suspects still not arrested, and which have stalled through unreasonable delay. Within 90 days, recovery plans must exist for priority cases.

Second: the forensic backlog itself. Police and relevant forensic authorities must present a funded plan within 60 days to cut the backlog and set turnaround standards for priority GBVF and femicide cases, meaning cases don’t wait indefinitely on lab results that never arrive.

Third: municipalities. Every municipality must conduct a women’s safety audit, flagging broken streetlights, overgrown public spaces, abandoned buildings, unsafe transport routes and similar hazard points. The most urgent risks get fixed within 90 days or folded into a funded implementation plan with its own deadlines. This is the measure most exposed to municipal capacity and budget constraints, since audits are cheap to produce but repairs are not.

Fourth: alcohol-related violence. Several government departments must submit a joint legislative and enforcement package within 60 days. Ramaphosa was careful here: alcohol does not cause gender-based violence and never excuses a perpetrator’s actions, but harmful alcohol use remains an aggravating factor that prevention work must address.

What changed in tone, compared with previous addresses, is the insistence that arrests and new programmes aren’t the finish line. Ramaphosa said institutions fail women when a woman reporting abuse gets turned away from a police station, when a woman seeking a protection order gets bounced between offices, or when forensic samples sit unprocessed while the person who committed the crime stays free. Those are the operational failure points the whole package is meant to close.

He also turned to society, particularly men and boys, arguing gender-based violence starts long before an assault, with attitudes that treat women as inferior and normalise harassment and control. “Women should not have to reorganise their lives around the threat of male violence,” he said, adding that government alone cannot end the crisis.

Seven years after he first addressed the country on this issue, Ramaphosa said South Africa should not still be having the same conversation. Whether the 60 and 90-day deadlines produce moving investigations, processed forensic evidence and repaired unsafe spaces, rather than another audit that gathers dust, is the question communities in Ekurhuleni and beyond will be watching closely.