We are all proud to be called South Africans, proud to belong to such a diverse and welcoming country.
But I can still remember a time when we used to sleep with our doors open or sit outside our homes until midnight in summer. Oh, how I long for those days! I wonder where we lost them. I’m probably going on like a mad woman; maybe I am mad.
I remember when men used to protect women and take care of them, respecting and loving them. And women used to do the same to their husbands and children. Maybe that’s a thing of the past.
Recently the country was shaken by the rape and murder of a young woman in the Western Cape, Anene Booysen. Booysen was raped and killed in Bredasdorp, where she lived. While we were still trying to digest Anene’s death, two young women were raped in Kraaifontein; different cases but the same scenario: “raped and killed”.
There is one thing in common with these rapes. The crimes were committed by our own proudly South African youth. How did we get here? Who is to blame? Is it parents, democracy, unemployment or our government? Is our youth so bored that they find excitement through torture and by making their own society live in fear?
President Jacob Zuma, in his State of the Nation address, made it clear that any brutality and cruelty towards woman had no place in this country, and that he had directed law enforcers to treat rape cases as very important. In 2010, in KwaZulu-Natal, he made similar promises. He said that “a person that rapes – yihlazo nobuntswelaboya obesabekayo loko bakwenzayo, isenzo wubulwane uswele uboya”.
Hearing those words and those promises gave me hope that the government would take action against gender-based crimes.
The endurance that we have shown as a country about crime is now almost more than we can bear. We should not cry or lower our heads, hide our faces or turn a blind eye.
We need to support systems and campaigns and any other action that will help to eradicate crime from our country – especially crimes against woman and children. Cry the beloved country of grace and grief, South Africa!
Yondela Gijane is deputy secretary in Bellville local, Western Cape.