Thursday 4 April 2013

IGNORANCE IS A SILENT KILLER.

 

I often get told that I focus too much on the negative things rather than the positive things that are going on in this country; that is not true at all, I see the beauty of this country and I try my best to enjoy the privileges that have been given unto me but I cannot turn a blind eye and pretend that all is okay when It’s not.
Sometime last year I remember seeing on the news a story of a little girl who was raped by a teenage boy who also took out her eyes. Soon after that story, there was a report on the news again about a primary school teacher who raped siblings; a 7 year old girl and a 9 year old boy; this continues to happen in our country and I don’t see anything been done to stop it. I’ve recently learned that a woman is raped every 17 seconds and killed every six hours in South Africa (Jimmie Briggs); I know for a fact that I am not safe as a woman in South Africa. Women get raped everyday by strangers, people they trust and by law officials; all these people do it because they know that they can get away with it.  People of the law feel that they can commit any form of crime and get away with because they are well connected within the system. Where is the justice? What happened to right and wrong?

Photo taken from google images
Two days ago while I was watching my favourite drama series “InterSexions” I saw a lady being raped because she is a lesbian. I remember the perpetrators saying to her “we are giving you what you’ve been missing” as if they were doing her a favour by raping her. We hear of similar incidents all the time and do nothing; it’s like we have accepted rape as something normal that we can live with; like getting flue.  I remember when I was about 7/8 witnessing mob justice; a man had raped a little girl who was actually a friend of mine and everyone in my community beat him up. I remember my dad coming inside the house to collect his shambock and I followed him out to see what he was going to do with it. That is the type of justice we need, where the people come together to fight for what is right.

www.google.com
There’s a movie that I love so much called LAW Abiding Citizen; in that movie, two people break into a man’s house to rob him; when they get there, they discover that he has a wife and a baby girl. So they hit him and tie him up and start stealing, while he’s lying there on the floor defenseless,  his wife comes and she screams when she sees him lying there; one of the guys hits the wife, rapes her, kills her; then the little girl comes and he does the same to her. During the trial of the case, the victim’s lawyer makes a deal with the guy that did this because he didn’t believe that they could win the case even though a woman and a little girl were brutally raped and murdered. The victim was so devastated and said that he will testify because he was there and had seen what happened; the lawyer then said to him “It’s not what you know but what you can prove in court” the justice system had failed the poor man. 10 years later, after studying law books and how the justice system works, the man killed the perpetrators and everyone who was involved with that case and proved that he could kill people and get away with it.
The moral of the story here is, if the justice system fails us, then we must come with our own system that will work for us and bring about justice. One person alone cannot do it, but together we can. When we start to take action against crime and violence, more and more victims will come out and report their cases and that will lead to more justice being served. We must not feel sorry for people who commit such crimes because they know that it is wrong; “if you do the crime, you must be willing to do the time”. It took the whole nation to fight against apartheid because there were tired of living in fear, let us stand together once again and protect our children, mothers, grandmothers, daughters, nieces, aunts,  and our sisters. The time is now, let us stop accepting such behavior, break the silence and make sure that justice is served. TOGETHER WE CAN.


Written by
Ntombifuthi Patience Mazibuko