Nothing to celebrate

So another redundant Women’s Day holiday rolls around, with nothing to celebrate for SA women, who are continually and singularly failed by so many men in this country.

The asinine official lip service paid to the need for reduced gender-based violence in SA, while each even more horrific female rape or murder merely elicits further widespread calls for a greater, but ultimately utterly ineffective, police response, is nothing short of embarrassing.

That every horrific incident seems to generate a resulting, though somewhat understandable, focus by the powers that be on completely the wrong thing — for instance, the zama zamas and the recent gang rape of eight women in Krugersdorp — means the focus switched again from the deep, life-altering trauma these young women experienced through no fault of their own.

I decry the realities of being a woman in SA, where so often male power is used to denigrate, wound, humiliate and disempower women. I am ashamed, I am outraged and, like so many of my female compatriots, I am despondent and afraid.

Carole Mason Houghton