Nosipho Mlaba and her heavily pregnant sister Bongile faced a difficult decision last Tuesday.

Should they run 7km to the nearest police station to report that their grandmother had been stabbed and beg police to arrest her attacker? Or face being told over the phone that police don’t have a van and can’t come to their rural home in Inanda, outside Durban?

Knowing it was unlikely police would have a van available, they chose to run, leaving their bleeding  54-year-old grandmother Nobelungu with neighbours in their community, which is plagued by crime, particularly gender-based violence (GBV)...