Most strikingly, what we watched happen in that powder room in Sandton aligns with the findings from the HSRC’s GBV Survey, showing that 30.6% of men who were interviewed agreed that they would defend their reputation with force if they had to, if, for instance, they had been insulted.

“I’ll murder you now and walk.” “I’ll put a bullet in all of you.”

These chilling words came from Lawrence Chamurwa Mudzinganyama, confronting three women in the women’s powder room at Vlamo restaurant after his advances were rejected. The location matters. He was inside a private space specifically designated for women, a boundary that should not have to be explained or negotiated. The timing matters too. This happened during a week of intensified national attention to violence against women, as South Africans grappled with the murder of nine women in Ekurhuleni.

Despite this, what followed was a shocking display of patriarchal weaponisation of position, money and power: “I’ll murder you now and walk.” The threat was not only that he could kill them, but that he could do so with impunity. His statement is sadly supported by data. Evidence from the fourth South African Medical Research Council’s (SAMRC) National Femicide Study shows that fewer than one in five cases result in a conviction. Furthermore, in cases where the perpetrators’ relationship to the victim was known, non-intimate-partner femicides accounted for roughly 39.9% of femicides in 2020-21. Furthermore, police failed to identify a perpetrator in 44.5% of all femicide cases.

With this knowledge, it makes sense that as the night drew to a close, Lawrence Mudzinganyama walked out of Vlamo restaurant a free man, expecting no repercussions for his verbal violence and aggressive behaviour; that was until the recording went viral on 20 September.

This case is an illustration that the gap between the verbal and/or physical threat and the consequence tells the entire story of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) in South Africa.

It is why the Sandton video cannot be understood in isolation from what has been happening 25 kilometres east, in Ekurhuleni. Ten women’s bodies (nine in Ekurhuleni and one in Soweto) have been found since July 2026 and while the police have not confirmed the existence of a serial killer, criminologists have pointed to a pattern in where and how some of these women were found. What is not in dispute is the number of femicide cases in a country that has already declared GBVF a national disaster.

South Africa’s intimate partner femicide rate remains among the highest globally. And what should trouble us is not only the killing itself, but everything that happens before it.

This is often the part that rarely makes the news because it does not produce a body. As noted in Mapping the Use of Guns in Violence Against Women: Findings from Three Studies Report, “a gun does not need to end a life to destroy it. Firearms are used to threaten, injure and enforce compliance, inflicting profound psychological and physical harm on women”.

In 2024, the first Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) baseline survey on gender-based violence found that 4.9% of women (translating to nearly 1.1 million women in South Africa) had been threatened with a gun, knife or other weapon or had a weapon used against them in their lifetime.

The same survey asked men directly what they believed about women, marriage and their own entitlement to react when challenged and their responses offer insight into the disturbing attitudes and gender norms that can enable violence against women, including beliefs that can be used to justify it.

Most strikingly, what we watched happen in that powder room in Sandton aligns with the findings from the HSRC’s GBV Survey, showing that 30.6% of men who were interviewed agreed that they would defend their reputation with force if they had to, if, for instance, they had been insulted.

The idea that violence is an acceptable response when a man feels disrespected is common and is often used to justify violence and aggressive behaviour. Rejection can become particularly dangerous when it is experienced not simply as no, but as a challenge to male authority, entitlement and ego.

Public displays of aggression, threats of harm and verbal violence are not restricted to strangers; they are often a manifestation of how some men behave in their intimate relationships. Among its findings, the HSRC showed that 57.6% of ever-partnered women have experienced controlling behaviours from an intimate partner in their lifetime.

More than three-quarters of men (77.2%) admitted to having agreed with one or more statements about controlling behaviour in their own relationships.

Furthermore, nearly seven in 10 ever-partnered men (69.5%) believed a woman should obey her husband. More than a third (37.5%) said a man should have the final word in all family matters. Almost a quarter (22.5%) believed a woman cannot refuse to have sex with her husband, and 15.0% believed a husband has the right to punish his wife if she does something wrong. Nearly one in 10 (9.9%) believed women who are raped are usually to blame for putting themselves in that situation, and 11.9% believed that if a woman does not physically fight back, it is not rape.

Nearly three-quarters of men (73.9%) also believed that South Africa’s laws make it too easy for a woman to bring a violence charge against a man, even though 84.0% knew those laws exist and 84.0% knew that a husband who forces his wife to have sex is committing a crime. What these results tell us is that the knowledge is there. But sitting alongside men’s awareness is the belief that GBV laws should not really apply to them.

We saw the script that played out in the Sandton powder room. A group of women told him no, and his response was to diminish them with derogatory, misogynistic insults, threaten to murder them and simply walk away as if their lives could be taken without consequence. He was not improvising. His behaviour followed a well-documented script reflected in the findings that roughly a third of South African men endorse the use of force when a man’s ego is bruised and that laws intended to hold men accountable for violence are too easily used against them.

Verbal abuse and controlling behaviours informed by gendered norms are the quiet, domestic, deniable version of what we saw being shouted inside a restaurant powder room in Sandton. A man deciding that a woman’s autonomy is subordinate to his will, and that he has the standing to enforce it. Misogyny, controlling behaviours and verbal abuse may not always escalate to the lethal physical violence observed in Ekurhuleni. But femicide is not always a sudden event. It is the last stop on a road that often starts with entitlement and is built, step by step, by a society that treats each step along the way as somehow less serious than the other in it.

We saw that logic play out in real time after the Sandton video went viral. The public response was not only horror and dismay at what this man said; in fact, some defended him, suggesting that he was disrespected, while others inquired about what the women had done to provoke him.

Many allies on social media and beyond rallied around the victims and worked hard to identify the perpetrator, find out who he was and identify the company he ran. This is a bystander intervention in action, where public discourse and action ensured that he did not simply “walk”.

Within a day, he had been identified, arrested and removed from his roles at Moriel Infrastructure Group. He is due to appear in court on 1 October 2026. This is an example where tangible consequences seem to have followed swiftly, but many cases that do not trend remain unattended as women continue to be the victims of GBVF.

It is now left to the justice system to determine what criminal accountability follows and ensure that he, and the many who have threatened and killed women, do not get to walk free. South Africa needs to send a strong message that this pattern must end. Each act of aggression and every threat must be taken seriously because every rung on the ladder can lead to violence and femicide.

But accountability after the fact is not prevention. Public outrage, media attention, social sanction and criminal consequences matter, but they do not, on their own, deter men from violence. Preventing violence requires sustained, evidence-based interventions that address the norms, behaviours and conditions that enable it, and that can demonstrate reductions in perpetration.

That means intervening before violence occurs. Controlling behaviour and the beliefs about obedience, entitlement and reputation that sustain it need to be recognised and addressed, as the data indicates. They are not private relationship dynamics but documented, measurable precursors to violence, held by the near-majority of South African men.

When a man threatens to shoot a group of strangers in a powder room, that threat demands an immediate and serious criminal justice response. These incidents are not just viral clips that shame boards and corporations into issuing a statement. They must become mechanisms to place pressure on authorities to hold perpetrators accountable.

Nine women were found in Ekurhuleni. Days later, a group in Sandton were told that they could be murdered too. Threats, intimidation and controlling behaviour must be taken seriously, precisely because they are part of the continuum of violence that can end in femicide. The distance between these acts of violence and femicide is smaller than we like to pretend.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). The authors write in their personal capacity.

Dr Mpumi Zungu – Senior Research Director at the Human Sciences Research Council & GBV activist.

Dr Zaynab Essack – Research Director, Human Sciences Research Council.

Dr Whadi-ah Parker – Chief Research Specialist, Human Sciences Research Council.

Professor Khangelani Zuma – Divisional Executive, Human Sciences Research Council.

This opinion piece was originally published in the Mail & Guardian