Written by Matthew Neal; Reader submission
South African women are being told to be careful again.
Don’t run alone. Avoid isolated places. Stay alert. Travel or exercise in groups.
The warnings follow the discovery of eight women’s bodies across Ekurhuleni over the past two months. Police have launched an intensive investigation, but have not established that all eight cases are connected or that a single serial killer is responsible.
The advice is understandable. Proverbs commends the prudent person who sees danger and takes refuge.
But prudence cannot be the whole answer.
Why must women keep carrying so much of the burden created by violent men?
Judges 19 tells of a night when men surround a house. A woman is handed over to them. Her vulnerability is used to preserve a man.
The book eventually gives its terrible diagnosis of that age: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).
Then Ruth opens in those same days.
Another vulnerable woman. Another night. Another man.
Boaz.
He has strength, status and opportunity. Yet Ruth’s vulnerability does not become something for him to exploit. He protects her. He orders the men around him not to touch her (Ruth 2:9). Later, at the threshing floor, he guards her dignity and reputation.
And for Christian men, the pattern rises higher still.
Christ “loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).
That is what strength is for.
Not hurting women is the minimum.
Righteous strength notices. It intervenes. It challenges the friend crossing the line. It refuses the degrading joke. It walks someone to her car. It makes the room safer because it is there.
Women should exercise wisdom. Police must pursue perpetrators. Government has a duty to make public spaces safer.
But men have a responsibility too.
We cannot keep answering male violence by teaching women increasingly sophisticated ways to be afraid. A society is not safe simply because its women have become better at surviving danger.
Men, use your strength to make women safer.
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Date published: 17/09/2026
Feature image: Sourced from Daily Maverick
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