COMMENT: The white right, women's murders and a massacre of statistics - Africa Check

15.8.14

COMMENT: The white right, women's murders and a massacre of statistics - Africa Check: First, the term “others” does not mean “unknown” but refers to anyone “other” than an intimate partner. The killer could very well be a stranger but they could also be a brother, a father, an uncle, a colleague, a friend or an acquaintance.

Secondly, when it is calculated that 80.9% of “other” men are African this does not mean that 80.9% of those who kill African women are African, that 80.9% of those who kill coloured women are African or that 80.9% of those who kill white women are African.

That sort of finding can only be made when separate analyses of each group of women is undertaken by perpetrator race. The MRC study did not undertake such analysis so we therefore do not know the racial breakdown of perpetrators per category of women.

Given that 75.6% of the women killed by “others” were African, it is most likely that the overwhelming majority of African men who killed a woman, killed African women. But of course, given that we do not have racial breakdowns of perpetrators per category of women, it also possible that some white men may have killed some African women, that a few African men may have killed a small number of Indian women and that some coloured men killed white women. Each of these permutations is possible when we are dealing only with percentages overall.