The Quorum is Toxic

How many people must die before we agree that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we understand love, power and violence?

Zimbabwe is once again confronting the horror of intimate partner violence. Recent killings have ignited public debate, outrage, speculation and the familiar rush to explain the unexplainable. Women have been killed by men. Men have been killed by women. Families have been shattered, children traumatised and communities left trying to make sense of violence that should never have happened.

Yet something about this moment demands a harder conversation: why does our collective urgency so often depend on who the victim is?

Male victims deserve compassion, justice, protection and the freedom to speak without ridicule. Their suffering must never be minimised because they are men. But we must also be honest about the history of this conversation. Women, survivors, feminists and community organisations have spent decades documenting gender-based violence, warning about escalating abuse and demanding prevention, protection and accountability. Their warnings were not new. The recommendations were not missing. The question has always been whether we were prepared to act.

We cannot suddenly discover that intimate partner violence is a national emergency simply because the public conversation has expanded to include victims whose suffering challenges our assumptions about gender. Nor should recognising violence against men require us to dilute the reality of femicide. Equality in our response does not require dishonesty about the different ways violence is experienced. We can hold both truths without turning grief into a competition.

Perhaps the most uncomfortable question is whether we have mistaken the ability to enter a relationship for the ability to sustain one. We teach people how to pursue love, celebrate weddings and build families. But how often do we teach them to manage rejection, regulate anger, respect boundaries, share power, communicate without intimidation or leave a relationship without threatening another person's life?

We romanticise jealousy as proof of affection. We confuse control with commitment and possessiveness with protection. We tell people to fight for love without explaining that love is not a licence to dominate another human being. When heartbreak becomes an excuse for homicide, we must confront the dangerous entitlement beneath the language of passion. Pain deserves support. Violence demands accountability.

And then there is the pressure inside our homes. Unpaid care work, financial insecurity, unemployment and the unequal distribution of domestic responsibilities can intensify conflict. Women are often expected to carry the invisible labour of keeping households functioning, while men may be socialised to suppress vulnerability until frustration emerges as aggression. These are not universal experiences, and hardship does not make violence inevitable. But a society unwilling to discuss its pressures, power imbalances and expectations will keep treating every tragedy as an isolated incident.

Even climate change belongs in this conversation not because drought or extreme heat causes someone to become abusive, but because climate shocks can deepen food insecurity, disrupt livelihoods, increase unpaid care burdens and strain already fragile support systems. Climate resilience that ignores household safety, gender equality and access to support is incomplete. We cannot build resilient communities while pretending that what happens behind closed doors is somebody else's concern.

Zimbabwe does not need another season of outrage followed by collective amnesia. We need funded prevention, accessible counselling, safe shelters, effective protection mechanisms, legal support and services that recognise survivors of every gender. We need emotional regulation, consent and non-violent conflict resolution taught before relationships reach crisis point. We need institutions to account for what they have implemented not simply recycle recommendations that have existed for years.

A quorum is the minimum number of people required for a meeting to conduct business. But what happens when a society appears to need a particular number, type or combination of victims before it considers violence worthy of urgent action?

Women spoke. Survivors spoke. Communities warned us. Too often, the response was inadequate. Now, more people are listening. Let us make this moment count not by arguing over whose pain deserves the microphone, but by demanding action that prevents the next death.

If the quorum for taking violence seriously is the number of people who must die before we act, then our quorum is toxic.

The measure of our humanity cannot be how passionately we condemn a killing after it happens. It must be whether we had the courage, resources and political will to prevent it.

No one should have to die to make their suffering believable. And no gender should have to become the headline before humanity becomes the priority.