GBV, child murder, xenophobia – There’s no good story to tell in South Africa

As early as it is in the year, as a nation we are already “going through the most” and as a country, we need to ask ourselves, how good a year will this be considering how it has already started.

Have we continued to break barriers and reach higher levels of coming together as people, growing as a nation, and are we still serving as a beacon of hope for African countries?

The soaring incidents of femicide and child murder should have us ashamed, that women currently should fear a simple ride home in an e-hailing service.

The deaths of many unnamed women who were murdered continued to rise on a daily basis. Could our country possibly be the most dangerous place for women to live in Africa?

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With the explosion in xenophobic attacks, do we have a good story to tell? That the issue of the right of migrants and refugees to enjoy the gains of the land – how have we not defined this conversation a while back in order to avoid Operation Dudula protests?

Have we ever defined the attacks for what they are?

We cannot learn anything if we are to label the root cause as something fictitious. Are these xenophobic or an attack on the perpetrators of crimes, these perpetrators being of foreign descent?

We continue to have a pot of overflowing corruption, of a government that consider the public purse a monthly allowance. While basic services are yet to impress, the grotesque display of ill-gotten gains by public officers leaves one feeling despondent.

While grannies are being tied to benches in waiting rooms of hospitals, children are drowning in pit toilets. And the children whose parents are determined to have them educated must cross overflowing rivers to reach their schools while government officials are lapping up every form of luxury.

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Is this the freedom gains that struggle icons died for? I could never understand how far the moral compass has turned, especially in the corridors of political power.

There is so much that we must continue to work on, while there are no immediate and tangible solutions. But these are conversations we must be having.