Members from different political parties and members of the general public are seen protesting outside the Pretoria Magistrate's Court where a 20-year-old man accused of raping a 7-year-old girl in a Dros in Silverton made his appearance, 2 October 2018, Pretoria. Picture: Jacques Nelles
The Dros rape incident exposes the inequalities that permeate the country daily.
Sadly the issues are colour and privilege. We may not want to admit it, but our society is divided by class and race.
While we scurry to hide our nakedness as a nation, our inaction on the ever ballooning incidences defined on the basis of colour and privilege keep rearing their ugly heads – such as the handling of the Dros rape case.
Reality is, if a person named Sipho was caught bloodied with a helpless seven-year-old in an eatery’s toilet, Sipho would have been served with mob justice. His life would have been in immediate danger.
But the Dros accused, caught naked and bloodied, had the nerve to hurl insults at the people who caught him. There was an unspoken confidence in his behaviour. He knew his life was not in danger. South Africa, admit it because you know it is true.
While we cannot advocate his life and that of his family be put to kangaroo courts, one has to question why society treats the same crimes differently – as with Oscar Pistorius. Violence against women and children is a crime.
Sadly, men who have sat back while women and children were being butchered – like Karabo Mokoena – now suddenly found their voices: because a white man has violated a black child…
Where were those voices when your brothers and friends were butchering us as if we were the meat before a feast? Why do you only find your voices based on the colour of the predator?
How can our daughters feel safe in a society that only wants to protect them when pigmentation rules our readiness to take action?
While we as society allow that those who stand before the law are dictated on based on colour, class and certainly gender, we will always remain a warped society.
Men are secure in knowing they will only question each other as peers when the demographics of the crime compel them to.
Based on my skin colour, age, gender and weight – it’s only a matter of time before I, too, will form part of the stats.
And not a soul will have anything to say for my defence!
Kekeletso Nakeli-Dhliwayo.
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