Women’s anger is justified

Share this article: Share Tweet Share Share Share Email Share

I grew up in Pietermaritzburg, raised by a single mother. If I came home after dark, my mother would panic and shout at me. Playing outside the home was denied. My mother would lecture, “don’t play in the street, bad things happen to street girls”. I know that many other young women have experienced these talks and these movement restrictions. Our mothers, grandmothers and aunts knew that we are living in a country at war with women and girls. The high statistics of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) highlight that IPV is the most common and leading cause of death among South African women. This has been our lived experience for years. A problem is the lack of politicisation of this clear war. We leave it to the private realm, we place a burden on women to “avoid” being murdered and abused. We allow men in this country to have free rein to abuse and kill women with impunity. Our state institutions fail and deny women justice, therefore it is not surprising that rape and IPV remain severely under-reported by women. We simply have no faith in the supposed justice system, whereby we expect secondary victimisation and we pre-empt “missing dockets”. Karabo Mokoena is one of approximately a thousand women who were brutally murdered by an intimate partner (and/or ex-partner) since January 2017. We must be unafraid to clearly articulate that their deaths are the result of patriarchal violence. We have witnessed many people express discomfort with #MenAreTrash trending on social and mainstream media. Yet, this is a crisis of epidemic proportions and women’s anger is justified; this is not a time to be polite.

These last two weeks have proven what South African women and feminist activists have been trying to communicate for decades. As a woman, a Member of Parliament, and as a leader in the EFF, I have been deliberating the individual and collective actions that are required. Beyond mobilising within my party, I have chosen to monitor and hold public institutions to account, to attend court cases and assist family members.

We have seen that although police stations are required to have alternative and private area for reporting domestic violence and sexual related crimes, this is not the case. Women are still subjected to opening a sexual crime case or domestic violence next to someone who is having documents certified.

I was horrified when a father told me that he reported his 15-year-old daughter missing and to date he has not received even a call from the South African Police Service (SAPS) regarding who the investigating officer is.

Fortunately, his daughter was found a few days later, without any help from SAPS. It is certainly the norm that cases of missing persons are put at the bottom of the file and only taken out when the woman is reported dead. I was enraged when I attended the court cases of the brutal murders of Karabo Mokoena and Lerato Moloi.

There were lengthy delays, the investigating officers were late and they were aggressive in their communications to community members attending. They had forgotten that they are public servants! If this occurs in high-profile cases I can only imagine how poorly the countless unknown cases are treated.

In the North West, the man accused of a murdering and setting alight the 15-year-old girl whose body was found in Klerksdorp on Mother’s Day, is also accused of raping an elderly grandmother. Why was he granted bail to continue his violent attack on women? The State must account and legislation has to be amended so accused sex offenders are not granted bail.

As Professor Pumla Gqola reminds us in Rape: A South African Nightmare, we need to “render violators unsafe”. While interrogating the violence against women that occurs in intimate spaces, especially relationships, family or friendships, we must acknowledge the progress and activism women have made.

We are refusing to just be helpless victims. And in return patriarchal violence is increasing its backlash, often using it’s most lethal tools. I am saying that violent masculinity and patriarchal egos are exploding because men are seeing women reclaim their bodies and voices in ways that challenge their control over us. They see our naked protests, our #RUReference lists, our #RememberKhwezi protests, and our court protests.

The heightened cases of femicide in the media have taken their toll on us emotionally and psychologically - we are experiencing a range of emotions from rage to hurt to hopelessness. We have lost loved ones on this journey towards our emancipation.

Let us weep, wail, rant and rave together then lift each other up and enter this war zone confidently and decisively.

* Mathys is the treasurer-general of the EFF. She has worked extensively in rural areas, addressing issues of food security, social justice and other critical issues affecting rural women and children. She writes in her personal capacity.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

The Sunday Independent