On July 29, eight women were gang-raped in the Krugersdorp mine dumps during a music video shoot. The crime caught the attention of the media, the minister and Commissioner of Police. The police commissioner ordered an immediate operation to raid the R28 mine dumps. The detained suspects are profiled as illegal foreign nationals from Lesotho, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.

Although the police responded to the case by raiding the Krugersdorp mines their response could be categorised as performative because it spoke to the public sentiment, and an easy fix not related to the real problem or the needs of victims that experienced trauma of a gang rape. These women's stories were only used as a headline but none of the interventions spoken about on public platforms related to the well-being and justice for the victims.

The normalisation of violence in South Africa can be traced in the relationship between the state and the public. The public's currency to communicate to the state is through protest and shutdowns. The police interventions in protests often lead to violence, rubber bullets are used for crowd control and community members are arrested for protesting.

Often times protesters destroy property, burn tyres, and close off streets to get the attention of the municipality, provincial and state authorities. These shutdowns often occur after an incident of disaster like a femicide case , a rape, or a prolonged state of no service delivery, and all these can be attributed to the incapacity of provincial and municipal departments to efficiently serve the community.

The residents of Mogale City have reported individual cases of rape, theft, and vandalism by the alleged zama zamas for years, but inaction from the police led to the tipping of a boiling situation. The community believes the police's lack of response is due to corruption, alleging that the zama zamas bribe the police so they can continue operating.

The public already does not trust the police, and their violent response and treatment during protests and shutdowns often continues to affirm the gap of trust between the police and the community. The use of violence as a means of public order, is no stranger to black South Africans in the townships; during apartheid, the white government used violence as a means of control.

The incident dominated the headlines and Krugersdorp community members took to the street to protest for the safety of women and children. This led to protests and the shutdown of Krugersdorp with the focus shifting from gang rape to zama zamas' illegal mining. But, interventions did not consider the psychosocial needs of the victims.

Individuals were violated in the act of sexual abuse, with rape comes many psychosocial implications, like trauma and stigma. This incident amplified the fear that women live with, highlighting that there is no safe place for a woman's body as these women were working. Due to fear, women in South Africa have self-imposed curfews and prefer to be in groups to feel safer. Yet the incident highlighted that groups in South Africa do not offer a measure of protection.

The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation conducted a study on GBV within Kagiso.

Findings from the study have shown that women are primary victims of GBV and that they are often blamed for violence committed against them.

Moreover, the responsibility for women's safety is placed on women to bear, because of the narrative regarding black women in South Africa; having to be strong and handle all challenges they invariably experience secondary traumatisation as leaders are negating their experiences.

Bheki Cele's utterances: "One woman was raped by 10 different men. The other one by eight, the other one by six, the other one by four, [the other by] three. The one 19-year-old was lucky — if it is lucky — [to be] raped by one man," demonstrate the insensitivity regarding the crime. Such utterances normalise the act of sexual violence and diminish the experience of one victim by quantifying experience as "lucky" when a woman experiences sexual violence from one person.

Cele said it was shown that firearms were three times more likely than other weapons to be the weapon of choice in the reported murders, as 2 766 people were shot to death.

"The expansion of illegal firearms and the damage and destruction they can cause, is well documented. These crime statistics should be used as a management tool to guide the operational plans to deal with, amongst other crimes, the proliferation of firearms. "Police operational responses nationwide should continue to remove guns that are in the wrong hands," Cele said.

Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation executive director Annah Moyo-Kupeta said the increased gun violence highlighted the need to address poor policing.

"Murder crime statistics are the most accurate in the country compared to other crimes; this should be alarming to us. So when we locate it within the larger violence architecture, South Africa is a violent society and this is shown in the violent crimes that are increasing, and we should be looking at multiple strategies to address this issue," she said.

Moyo-Kupeta said one of the strategies that should be taken is to look at the normalisation of violence in the country, which can be largely attributed to the increase in violent crimes.

"We need to tap into why we are so violent, address some of the root causes for violence in the country. We see violence manifesting in various forms such as GBV and mass killings. Just over the weekend we saw the murder of one of the Abahlali baseMjondolo leaders – being gunned down at his own home. This is a killing that is worrying in the country.

"We need to go back to the drawing board to really (address) the root causes of this violence, if we are to really start from the bottom in addressing violence and the murders," she said.

Moyo-Kupeta said there was a need to tighten gun control and improve police visibility.

She said there was a high number of illicit firearms in communities and it was easy to get them on the streets or via the back door.

South Africa has a daunting drug problem. Post-1994, the proliferation of drugs on the country's streets has triggered a myriad of issues associated with substance abuse. Drugs such as nyaope and tik are accessible and affordable even for unemployed youth in townships with the drugs priced between R30 and R50.

Five years after the demise of apartheid, Vincent, a young, fresh-faced man arrived in remand detention in a Western Cape facility.

Vincent had never been to prison before, and when he arrived he was thrown into an overcrowded cell that held first-time inmates and long-standing gang members. He was scared to death and, sadly, his fears were confirmed: on his first night, he was raped – by two different inmates.