South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday condemned a surge of femicides

South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday condemned a surge of femicides since his government eased anti-coronavirus stay-at-home measures as “barbaric” and “acts of inhumanity”.

Murders of woman have spiraled since the start of June, when lockdown restrictions were loosened, allowing for more movement of people, according to the police.

Speaking at a virtual African National Congress meeting, Ramaphosa said gender-based violence “continues to plague our country and we have been saddened by the continuous and recurring news of men attacking and killing women in the past few weeks,” Agence France-Presse reports.

“Men continue to kill women in the most horrific and barbaric fashion,” he said, emphasizing that “it must end”.

In a weekly newsletter earlier, the president described the attacks as “acts of inhumanity”.

The victim of one of the most gruesome attacks was an eight (8) months pregnant woman whose stabbed body was found hanging from a tree in Roodepoort, a western suburb of Johannesburg.

Five days later, the body of another young woman was found on Friday dumped under a tree in Soweto.

Police have reported several other cases of femicide across the country in recent days.

The reasons for the sudden increase are being investigated. Police minister Bheki Cele has said that an overall rise in crime was caused by the lifting of a ban on the sale of alcohol.

On Saturday, Ramaphosa had referred to the past week as “a dark and shameful week for us as a nation”.

“We note with disgust that at a time when the country is facing the gravest of threats from the pandemic, violent men are taking advantage of the eased restrictions on movement to attack women and children,” he said in a statement.

In September 2019, femicide was declared a national crisis.