Love and fury

In the week when the “devil” was jailed for the murder of his girlfriend, another young woman died, allegedly at the hands of her former boyfriend.

On Thursday Sandile Mantsoe, described as a “devil in disguise” by the judge, was sentenced in the High Court in Johannesburg to 32 years behind bars for killing 22-year-old Karabo Mokoena.

Two days earlier Zolile Khumalo’s former boyfriend, Thabani Mzolo, was arrested for her murder in Durban.

The two women are statistics of femicide, an international scourge in which South Africa features prominently.

The World Health Organisation would classify the deaths as “intimate femicide” — a murder “committed by a current or former husband or boyfriend”.

A 2012 WHO report found: “Preliminary findings of a study by the WHO and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine show that more than 35% of all murders of women globally are reported to be committed by an intimate partner. In comparison, the same study estimates that only about 5% of all murders of men are committed by an intimate partner.”