What have I done as an individual to act against gender based violence?
Homes, schools, trains stations even post office have turned into crime scenes. What could the problem be?
Does pointing fingers make a difference when we all can acknowledge that there’s a problem? Does that make an issue vanish? These are rhetoric, but important questions to ask in times like these. We wake up every single day to news, social media posts of children and women who went missing, only to find them dead later.
To be quite honest I find many things amiss. The narrative by many puzzles me even the term “violence against women” seems problematic to me as it’s a passive statement that lives out an active agent or participant. Why do we leave out the participant(s)/perpetrator(s)?
We usually talk about how many women were sexually abused and rarely talk about how many men committed these acts. As if women abuse themselves.
Are we ever going to get this right, with these institutional arrangements? some victims experience secondary abuse in the same spaces they seek refuge. Services at the police stations, hospital, church, clinics, courts abuse them over again.
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Homes, schools, trains stations even post office have turned into crime scenes. What could the problem be?
Maybe we need to fix the basic societal unit, families. The perpetrators of these heinous crimes live with us. They are our brothers, friends, sons, fathers, uncles, cousins, husbands.
Does this have anything to do with their upbringing and backgrounds, as parents and relatives we do not pick up any signs? Who do we blame? When someone reports them, do we turn a blind eye and later plead ignorance?
Do we need hashtags, marches and petitions? Have these yielded any positive outcomes? Must we wait for another Uyinene Mrwetyana, Karabo Mokoena, Anene Booysen to be reminded of our activisms against this scourge? Are you waiting for crime to be committed against us or your loved one to act? Is it correct to let the main actors in the script fold their arms?
A man that is blue ticking us on these issues is no different from that that commit the act.
As a young woman in South Africa, I continue to yearn for your so-called freedom. Free to walk without checking over my shoulder, free to wear anything I want, anywhere I want. My heart is bleeding because of the abuse and secondary victimization that we continue to endure by being female.
Busi Kheswa works in the Gauteng Department of Social Development write in her personal capacity
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