|| MAKING A DIFFERENCE | WITH SJ
An Ongoing Journey Through Inspiration.
By: Archbishop Prof. SJ Uba, PhD
Part 664 | Saturday, August 1, 2026.
August Theme:
|| The Corridors and the Cries:
Confronting Wickedness in Power, and the Church's Answer to the Silence.
This Week: Women's Month, Part One
Today's Focus:
The Sound That Should Have Broken Us | Naming the Silence Around Femicide
Good morning, my friend. Yesterday we closed a corridor. We stood at the end of a month, spent examining the private architecture of a disciplined life, and we called it finished. Today, we open a different corridor, and I will not pretend this one is gentle. It smells of blood we have grown accustomed to stepping over.
Let me begin with what is documented, not what is felt, because feeling alone will not move an institution. According to the Human Sciences Research Council, between July and September 2024, 957 women were murdered in South Africa. A further 1,567 survived attempted murder. 14,366 were assaulted with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. 10,191 rapes were reported in that same ninety-day window. Those are three months. According to SAPS crime statistics reported by IOL, between April 2023 and March 2024, 5,578 women were killed nationally, a rise of 33.8% on the previous financial year. Peer-reviewed research published by the South African Medical Research Council in November 2025 places South Africa's rate of intimate partner femicide at roughly five times the global average. Africa Check, an independent fact-checking body, puts our national femicide rate at 12.2 per 100,000 women, six times the global rate recorded by the United Nations.
Now let me tell you what I found when I read, in full, the most recent national crime statistics release, delivered by the Acting Minister of Police on 22 May 2026, covering January to March this year. It runs to several thousand words. It names gang violence, extortion rackets, alcohol abuse, carjacking, and cash-in-transit robbery in careful detail. Women are mentioned twice. Once, to observe that in high-crime areas, women plan their lives around danger. Once, to name gender inequality as a root social factor. Nowhere in that address is there a specific count of *how many women were murdered in that quarter, though earlier SAPS releases have, at times, provided exactly that figure. I am not accusing anyone of concealment. I am naming an emphasis, and emphasis is itself a form of speech. What a leader chooses to count carefully is what a leader has decided matters most.
Let me put a name to what statistics can make abstract. On 24 August 2019, Uyinene Mrwetyana, a nineteen-year-old University of Cape Town student, walked into the Clareinch Post Office in Claremont, Cape Town, to collect a parcel. A post office employee, Luyanda Botha, told her the system was down and to return later. When she did, after the branch had closed to the public, he locked the door, raped her, and beat her to death. Her murder ignited the #AmINext movement and drew thousands into the streets of Cape Town and Johannesburg. It was not an isolated horror. It was, and remains, a pattern with a name and a rate attached to it. She should be a graduate by now. Instead, she is a statistic's face.
Scripture instructs a king plainly: speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves and defend the rights of all who are destitute (Proverbs 31:8–9, paraphrased). That instruction was given to a ruler, not to a charity. Silence from a leader, an institution, or a pulpit in the presence of documented suffering is not neutrality. It is a decision, and it is a decision the vulnerable notice long before anyone in power admits to making it.
I include the Church because I am the Church, and I have not always spoken loudly enough. It is worth an honest question, one I intend to ask of my own platforms before I ask it of anyone else: how many messages this year addressed gender-based violence by name, compared to how many addressed breakthrough, prosperity, or personal destiny? If the second number dwarfs the first, that imbalance is itself a form of silence, however unintentional.
|| Leadership Insight:
What an institution measures carefully reveals what it has decided matters. A leader's silence in the presence of documented suffering is never neutral. It is always a decision, and it is always noticed by the people it fails to protect.
|| Making a Difference Challenge:
This is a challenge to act at three levels because the problem is systemic and requires more than private resolve.
|| Personal: Learn the name of one femicide case from your own country or community this year. Say it aloud to someone.
|| Institutional: If you lead a church, organisation, or team, audit how often gender-based violence has been named specifically, not generally, in your platform's messaging this year. Bring the answer to your next leadership meeting.
|| Systemic: Share this with your network this week: the Gender-Based Violence Command Centre, run by South Africa's Department of Social Development, offers free 24-hour counselling and referral. Toll-free: 0800 428 428. Free "Please Call Me": 1207867#.
|| Prayer:
Father, forgive us for the silences we have called wisdom and the caution we have called peace. Give us the courage of Solomon's instruction to open our mouths for those who cannot speak for themselves. Break every comfortable distance between our pulpits and the suffering happening in our own communities. Raise up leaders and institutions who will name what is wrong instead of managing around it. Protect the women of our nation, our churches, and our homes, and let Uyinene's name and the names we do not yet know not be spoken in vain. Let this month be the beginning of an honest reckoning, not another news cycle we survive and forget. Amen.
|| Quote of the Day:
"What a leader measures carefully is what a leader has decided matters. If a nation's statistics can tell you everything about its robberies and nothing about its daughters, that is not an oversight. It is a confession."
— Archbishop Prof. SJ Uba, PhD
Remain lifted!
Yours truly,
SJ
|| About the Author
Archbishop Prof. SJ Uba, PhD, is a leadership scholar, theologian, institutional architect, and peace advocate. He is Founder and Presiding Prelate of the Global Ecumenical Council (GEC), advancing ecumenical unity, governance accountability, and kingdom influence through chapters established across nations; Founder and Pioneer of SJ UBA Leadership International, equipping leaders and transforming institutions through frameworks, mentorship, and capacity building; and Founder and Senior Pastor of Household of Saints Ministries International (HOSMI), championing spiritual formation, moral regeneration, and the manifest presence of God. His scholarship is anchored by a visiting accredited professorship at Northwest International University, Armenia.
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