Our women are abused and dying for love

Crimes against women in South Africa remained undeterred, when everything seemed to be barred. Except killing the female population.

We were told to stay at home, but there was no safety there as many were confined in homes with their abusers. Most of the retail sector comprises essential workers, who are largely women, who braved deserted streets in fear.

South African women are dying for love. Bodies are found under beds in shoddy shacks, the smell of decomposition masked by the surrounding filth in places their parents would never associate with their children, with men who mothers bemoaned, and fathers once emulated.

Our daughters who believe in love are being buried in enormous numbers. What can the women of our generation celebrate this coming and every other Women’s Month when we are being sent to slaughterhouses in such numbers under the guise of love?

South Africa has reached a new low. We have for the longest time been named the world’s rape capital. Today we are unquestionably a nation of no conscience!

The conversation we need to start having as a society is how have we moved from being afraid of an oppressor of a different skin colour to fear for an oppressor that resembles our brothers, fathers and husbands?

This is the SA that blood was shed for; this is the SA where women filled the shoes of absent husbands and fathers who had shown up for the greater good of the black nation.

But today women are prisoners and their bodies are crime scenes … cry, our beloved country.

Today we mourn the death of Tshego Pule, a young woman I saw grow up through the years. This is personal, and it hit home.

While we may speak of patriarchy and the abuse of systems, we must also speak the truth.

It’s the failure of the family unit; it is absent mothers and fathers, situational ethics and parenting that is lacking.

Ultimately, our children are our responsibility, so the family must do as much as possible to keep them safe.

Kekeletso Nakeli-Dhliwayo.

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