We all need to fight gender-based violence
Do we really need hashtags, marches and petitions? Have these yielded any positive outcomes?
Does pointing fingers make a difference when we all can acknowledge that there’s a problem? Does that make an issue vanish?
These are rhetorical but important questions to ask in times like these.
We wake up every single day to news and social media posts of children and women who went missing, only to be found dead later.
To be quite honest, I find many things amiss. The narrative expressed by many puzzles me. Even the term “violence against women” seems problematic to me as it’s a passive statement that leaves out an active agent or participant.
Why do we leave out the participants/perpetrators?
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, hospitals, churches, clinics and courts abuse them over again. Homes, schools, train stations, even post offices, 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 and 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 really need hashtags, marches and petitions? Have these yielded any positive outcomes?
Must we wait for another Uyinene Mrwetyana, Karabo Mokoena or Anene Booysen to be reminded of our activism against this scourge?
Are you waiting for a 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 who is blue-ticking us on these issues is no different to those who commit the act.
As a young woman in South Africa, I continue to yearn for our 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 victimisation that we continue to endure by being female.
Busi Kheswa works in the Gauteng Department of Social Development. She writes in her personal capacity.
