August has been a bleak month for women in SA, particularly at a time when South Africans are meant to be celebrating the strength and resilience of women in honour of those who marched in protest in 1965 against legislation aimed at tightening the apartheid government’s control over the movement of black women in urban areas.

This month, we have read about two young Eastern Cape women — Shenice Jonathan of Schauderville, Port Elizabeth, and Asithandile “Kwasa” Zozo of Dutywa — whose murders have rocked their communities and the nation...