by Simphiwe Skhosana
In this day and age, women are not free to embark on the roads without being humiliated. They cannot choose what they want to wear because something bad is going to happen to them. Women cannot even trust their own families because some men in the family might be the perpetrators.
To be a woman in this generation you fear for your life because women are inferior human beings, they are powerless, they cannot fight for themselves, women are extremely weak if we had to compare them to men, and hence a majority of men take advantage of them because they are like infants who are too fragile to revenge for themselves. Women go through a lot whenever they are in a toxic romantic relationship or any other relationship.
A woman can be a target from someone who sees them every morning when they go to work or from someone who sees them gallivanting on the streets, they might even be a target at work, you as an individual you may trust the man who accompanies you to your car every afternoon to ensure that you are safe, thinking that the person is looking out for you and only to find out that the person is targeting your life and he wants to take your life and that particular individual is numbering your days as well. You may even think that the uncle who calls you every day, checking up on you cares about you only to find out that he is targeting you and is plotting something inhuman against you.
To be a woman it is like we have committed a crime to live. Little girls go through so much pain every day, Individuals whom we love and trust molest them, they cannot go to the streets to play with the other children because they fear for their lives, they do not even feel comfortable from such individuals, and the most painful part is that children do not speak whenever something is hurting them instead they bottle up until someone intervene and talk to them.
Women become victims of rape every single day, it is heart-sickening that they cannot walk in the streets without being touched or humiliated by certain individuals who want to satisfy their needs and this on its own it is revolting because women are not safe wherever they go.
Everything that is happening at this current moment reflects a sour or a heavy heart on me because it takes us back to 2017 when men were abducting or human trafficking women for their reasons, it brings all the sad memories when we lost women, and one of the young women amongst them was “Karabo Mokoena”, She had been crying inside and her life was taken brutally by an unremorseful human being, May her soul rest in peace. Recently we have lost a UCT student who had a bright future ahead of her, who was also heartlessly killed and raped by an old man who showed no remorse after taking her life. What kind of country are we living in? What have we done as women to deserve such hatred from men?.
They said we need to stop trashing men and find a solution, how can we not trash them whenever such is happening in our country, we can never stop, the government has to intervene and lock such people who commit these criminal activities or if they are going to be sentenced they must be sentenced to life sentence and so that those families who have lost their loved ones can find peace.
To be safe in this country I am urging women to carry anything so that they can protect themselves, our lives matter. We need to live in a country that is going to protect us from any inhuman activities; we cannot always hide because we are afraid that anything ruthless is going to happen to us. If it means that we carry weapons so be it so that we are safe and we able to fight back.
