Two decades of tracking femicide in South Africa: An analysis of four national surveys from 1999 to 2020/2021

The absence of reliable administrative data from many countries means that there is little global surveillance of femicide. We conducted femicide surveillance with four dedicated national retrospective mortuary-based surveys to understand its magnitude among women 14 years and older in South Africa from 1999 to 2020/21, including the first year of COVID-19. The surveys included data from police on the investigation to ascertain who perpetrated the femicide (i.e. an intimate partner or someone else). We found overall femicides declined between 1999 and 2009, but the rate of decline slowed in subsequent years. Intimate partner femicide increased during the first year of COVID-19, unlike non-intimate partner femicide. Firearm-related femicides also increased in parallel with the increased availability of firearms in the country during the same period. The data show that South Africa remains one of the countries with the highest recorded rate of intimate partner femicide globally (5.5/100,000 female population), almost five times the global average. We have shown that femicide is preventable, but the conditions of the COVID-19 response likely increased the risk for women in abusive relations. We have also shown the value of dedicated surveys in the absence of reliable information systems.