For whom the rooster never crows

Picture it: India, 1981, a small village and a boy with stars in his eyes… He’s spotted the raven-haired beauty at the front of his class and he’s smitten.

So he writes her a love letter – and the villagers first drag him behind a car with his mom running after it, pleading for her son’s life, before dumping him in front of an incoming train.

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His sin? He’s from the wrong caste. Now picture it: India, 2024, a small village and a girl with stars in her eyes – only, she gets raped by three boys.

So her mom does “the right thing” and reports it – only the dads of the three boys walk into her house and shoot her dead.

Her sin? She went to the police. And the rooster never crows … We fail our fellow man not three times, but hundreds of times; every day.

The police, “elders”, villagers “investigate” if the noise is big enough – but that’s the last you’ll ever hear about plain brutal murders in the name of man.

And the #MeToo Rose Gowans are silent because it’s not “sexy”. It’s, after all, an injustice hidden behind “culture”, not the Epsteins and Weinsteins laying a finger on young girls.

It’s just a father shooting to death two of his daughters in the back of his taxi on London’s streets because they defied him and the choice of grooms he gave them. “Honour killings,” they call it.

You don’t like the arranged marriage? No problem. You die. You fall in love with the wrong person and elope? No problem. You die.

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I say unashamedly that we, as society, pander to “culture” like we pander to our children’s “plus” sexuality: binary; “they”; skoliosexual – and me that am, I believe firmly, monosexual. And we shouldn’t.

If you tell me mankind is now freed from sexual slavery because of some hip words, I beg of you to free us from evil disguised as “culture”.

And closer to home? For me, it’s the initiation schools. How many more boys must die because of a “culture” that can’t or won’t control corruption?

Learn from other cultures: my grandsons are Jewish and had their initiation within days of their birth. They survived…

For me, it’s the paying of lobola – not to enrich your daughter; only the family.

Oh the pressure on our daughters: does she have a degree? Is she fit for a king by bearing only sons? Let’s throw in another couple of thousand because she’s a virgin.

When will I ever “sell” my daughter off… When will I ever stand up for humans’ rights; all humans. Not just women…