Let’s stand united in grief, not divided by social media
To grieve one loss of life does not mean the next has no value. To shout for one, ultimately means to shout for justice for all.
Yonela Boli, who was allegedly stabbed to death by his girlfriend, 10 February 2020. Image: Twitter. @ZuayNkunzi
A student is alleged to have been brutally murdered by his girlfriend – someone whom he shared an intimate relationship with is possibly the reason a family today has lowered a mattress for a mother to sit and weep on.
The family are still reeling in disbelief but once the casket has been lowered in the ground, they will set their sights on the wheels of justice. Oops, no worries, social media is already there!
Public commentators already lament how feminists, gender activists, the ordinary women on the streets and the media have not responded in the same fashion as they did when Uyinene Mrwetyana, Precious Ramabulana and, more recently, Tshidi Mocheko were murdered.
Why call into question the mourning of others, the outrage or the publication thereof?
This reminds me of the Reeva Steenkamp outcry… as a family mourned her death, the peanut gallery screamed that women housed under corrugated roofs and residing in dusty townships were sent to this slaughter house almost daily.
It was said the outpouring of sympathy for those of greater standing was a sign that justice was blind and those who were meant to apply the law were just as blind.
What’s to say that social media in its response, not from a place of fairness but of critique, was just as blind? There is no denying that the murder of Yonela Boli was senseless. But we should not call into question the devastation we, as women, feel for women.
Just as some men are eerily silent when men are the perpetrators, there will be instances when women feel that they have no reason to picket. We all have our different causes to fight and cannot question humanity when people do not share our exact sentiment on aching issues.
To grieve one loss of life does not mean the next has no value. To shout for one, ultimately means to shout for justice for all.
Why must we be divided in our quest for safer homes? Why must a section of the population mourn while another looks on?
We failed to see race and nationality when Enoch Mpianzi drowned. We know how to celebrate together, but we also know how to mourn together…
Kekeletso Nakeli-Dhliwayo.
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