South Africa's Femicide Crisis: Why Some Cases Get Attention, Others Fade

Palesa Koketso Tsotetsi was 20 years old and building a life. She worked at a call centre, earned money doing hair, nails and make-up, and pursued music. Her family was preparing to celebrate her birthday in July with a microphone-shaped cake and a street party. On 16 June, her body was found inside a dustbin in Soshanguve. Police opened a murder case and arrested three suspects.

Her death illustrates a troubling reality in South African public life: the same violence that kills nearly seven women every day often fails to register as national news, leaving families without the public pressure that can move police, prosecutors and politicians to act.

Palesa’s case received coverage, particularly from local and tabloid outlets. Photographs and calls for justice circulated on social media. But her name never became part of a sustained national conversation. There were no days of rolling coverage, no widespread demonstrations, no constant updates on major news platforms.

South African Medical Research Council research estimated that 2,409 women were murdered in 2020/21. About three women a day were killed by a current or former partner. These figures reveal the scale of the crisis, but they also flatten thousands of different lives into numbers. Palesa was not a statistic to her family. She was a young woman with a job, musical ambitions and an imagined birthday cake.

The question of why some cases break through into sustained national coverage while others remain local stories is not simple. Journalists make choices every day about what to cover. They consider public importance, proximity, prominence, conflict and unusual circumstances. They also work under severe practical constraints: too few reporters, shrinking budgets and far more stories than any newsroom can cover. No media organisation can report every crime in South Africa.

William Bird, director of Media Monitoring Africa, explained that the brutality of a case is often not enough to guarantee sustained coverage. “The tragic reality is that women are murdered every day,” he said. Cases are more likely to attract attention when the victim, accused or family is publicly known, has access to influential networks or is connected to an institution that journalists and audiences recognise. The circumstances of the crime may also need to be particularly unusual, shocking or difficult to ignore.

This creates an uncomfortable paradox. The more common violence becomes, the more likely individual cases are to be treated as part of a familiar pattern rather than as major news events. A murder may receive limited national attention not because an editor believes the victim is unimportant, but because no reporter is close enough to develop the story properly. National journalists are concentrated in large cities and news centres. A case near a newsroom is easier to cover than one requiring several hours of travel, particularly when police have released little information and reporters cannot easily verify what happened.

Local newspapers and community journalists often report cases that national outlets miss. Their work may be detailed and important, but it does not always reach a large audience. South Africa’s shrinking local-news sector has made this gap worse. When local publications close or employ fewer reporters, there are fewer journalists attending community meetings, building relationships with police stations and following cases through local courts. Inequality can emerge without a conscious decision to ignore particular victims.

Media attention often depends on what happens after the first report. Can the family provide photographs and basic information? Is someone willing to speak publicly? Can relatives travel to court, organise a march, contact journalists and repeatedly ask police for updates? Do they have lawyers, community organisations, university networks or large social media accounts supporting them?

Families with money, education, professional networks and reliable internet access may be better positioned to keep a case visible. Families in rural areas, informal settlements or under-resourced communities may struggle to reach journalists or sustain a campaign while dealing with funeral costs, trauma and the justice system. Nanji Nandag, an investigative journalist and founder of the Foundation for Gender Rights Reporting and Innovation, described this as a “priority of victimhood.” “Race, ethnicity and class continue to shape public empathy in many African societies because structural inequalities influence whose lives are viewed as socially valuable,” she said.

Poverty can make a case less visible because families with limited resources may not be able to organise press conferences, mobilise supporters or maintain contact with journalists over months or years. Newsrooms also rely on accessible sources. A family with a spokesperson who answers calls and provides updates is easier to cover than one grieving privately or distrusting the media. Neither family is more deserving. One simply fits more easily into the way news is gathered.

The term “missing white woman syndrome” was developed in the United States to describe disproportionate media attention given to missing white women, particularly those who are young, middle class and considered conventionally attractive. Research has found racial differences in how missing women are covered in American news. The term should not be imported into South Africa without context. The country has a different population, history and media landscape. Race still matters, but it is not the only factor.

Class, geography, age, occupation, the identity of the accused and a family’s ability to mobilise can all affect coverage. The murder of Reeva Steenkamp became a global story partly because Oscar Pistorius killed her. Bird noted that the accused’s profile made the case especially newsworthy. Uyinene Mrwetyana’s murder in 2019 became a national turning point. She was a young Black student at the University of Cape Town; her disappearance had already caused concern, and she was killed inside a post office, a public institution where she should have been safe. Her death helped spark the #AmINext movement and nationwide protests.

Mrwetyana’s case shows why race alone cannot explain which victims receive national attention. Some stories break through because several factors come together: an active family and community, a recognisable institution, a clear failure by the state, social media momentum and a moment when public anger is already building.

Social media has given families and communities a way to bypass traditional newsrooms. A missing-person poster can reach thousands of people within hours. A hashtag can attract journalists, place pressure on police and connect families with activists or legal support. This has made the news agenda less dependent on editors alone. But social media is not automatically fair. People with large audiences have more influence. Posts with clear photographs, emotional videos or shocking details are more likely to be shared. Algorithms reward attention and engagement, not social importance. A case may trend because it is easy to package, not because it is more serious.

Virality also creates risks. False information can spread quickly. Graphic photographs may be shared without the family’s permission. Strangers may analyse a victim’s relationships, clothing or behaviour as though the case were entertainment. Bird said social media increasingly influences newsroom decisions, particularly as under-resourced news organisations try to identify stories that attract public interest. That can help bring overlooked cases into view. It can also encourage newsrooms to focus on the same few viral stories, while quieter cases remain difficult to see. Palesa’s case circulated online. That did not turn it into a prolonged national story. Social media can provide an opening. It cannot guarantee sustained attention.

Public attention matters in concrete ways. It can push senior police officials to demand updates, encourage witnesses to come forward and keep pressure on prosecutors or politicians. Journalists can uncover missing evidence, delayed forensic reports and contradictions in official accounts. But media coverage cannot replace a functioning justice system. A heavily reported case can still collapse because evidence was poorly collected, witnesses were not protected or prosecutors could not prove guilt. A case with little publicity can still be properly investigated.

South Africa’s justice failures run deeper than media visibility. Medical Research Council findings from the same 2020/21 period showed that police had not identified a perpetrator in about 44 percent of femicide cases examined in 2017. Among cases in which a perpetrator was identified, fewer than one in five intimate-partner femicide cases ended in a conviction during the study period. Those figures point to problems in policing, forensic work, prosecution and the courts.

Crime reporting tends to focus on moments of immediate drama: a disappearance, the discovery of a body, an arrest or a first court appearance. The justice process then moves slowly. Court postponements are repetitive and expensive to cover. Police may provide few updates. Editors turn to newer stories. This means audiences often learn the shocking details of a killing but little about its causes, consequences or outcome. “We focus on the event, the abduction, the murder, the killing, the gruesome details,” Bird said. “We do not focus on the consequences, on the why and who.”

The human cost extends well beyond the immediate victims. The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation has warned that relatives of femicide victims may experience prolonged grief, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Children can lose both parents when one is killed and the other is arrested, imprisoned or dies afterwards.

The solution is not to demand identical national coverage for every murder. That would be impossible and could produce rushed, intrusive or poorly verified reporting. Newsrooms can, however, examine the patterns in their own choices. News organisations can build systems for following gender-based violence cases over time rather than depending on individual reporters to remember each one. Civil society organisations can help by documenting cases, supporting families and maintaining databases where official monitoring is incomplete. But responsibility cannot be placed entirely on newsrooms and activists. Police and prosecutors should provide regular, accurate information instead of forcing families to campaign publicly for basic updates.

South Africans have not stopped caring about violence against women. The public response to cases such as Mrwetyana’s shows that enormous anger, grief and solidarity exist. Local journalists, activists, counsellors and families continue working on cases long after national attention has moved elsewhere. But public visibility is not distributed equally. Some families have the networks and resources to keep asking for attention. Others must grieve while trying to convince police, journalists and the public that their loved one’s case deserves urgency.

Palesa’s death was reported. What it did not receive was sustained national attention. The problem is that limited newsroom capacity, familiar news values, unequal access and social-media pressure can combine to make some victims far more visible than others.