"Violence and abuse against women have no place in our society. Government is calling on women to speak out, and not allow themselves to be victims by keeping quiet," the official government Twitter account said after Mrwetyana’s death. Blaming the victim.
On the day Mrwetyana’s alleged killer appeared in court, the body of Janika Mallo, 14, was found in the backyard of her grandmother’s home in Heinz Park, Cape Town. A few days earlier, a six-year-old child was shot dead in Lavender Hill on the Cape Flats.
Last week, police officer Bulelani Manyakama was arrested hours after shooting dead his girlfriend, Leighandre Jegels, in East London. Manyakama had crashed his car, apparently while fleeing, and died from his injuries in hospital the next day.
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As I write this, marauding gangs of thugs are roaming the streets of Joburg, looting, torching and killing. All in the name of fighting undocumented immigrants.
News24 quoted Bheki Cele, the police minister, as telling South Africans that the violent acts were "nothing but criminality that must be stopped in its tracks". Oh, the urgency!
Police arrested 91 suspects, but don’t hold your breath. They’re all probably out on bail by now.
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday shook off his jetlag from his trip to Japan and France to issue a statement about the killings of Jegels, Mallo and Mrwetyana. "This is a very dark period for us as a country," he said.
"The assaults, rapes and murders of SA women are a stain on our national conscience."
What we need is a reset, to put a stop to this mayhem. A ruthless effort to enforce the rule of law.
Amending the constitution to restore the death penalty is, I believe, only one of the steps we need to take. Before you remind me how barbaric the death penalty is, even when imposed on the scum who have earned it, speak first to someone who has lost a loved one to crime.
They are victims of a country that values the freedom of criminals more than the lives of citizens
My 13-year old daughter is going to high school next year, and will stay at the boarding school a few hours away. This means I will no longer drive her to school in the mornings. Neither will I be fetching her in the afternoons. I have to trust that the school will be able to keep her safe. But I don’t even trust myself to be able to protect her. For I, too, have not been feeling safe for a while now.
I will still be living with her 10-year old sister. At least she’ll be within safe distance from me throughout the day, or within the primary school yard and under its care. On weekends, she’ll be within the protective walls of our sectional-title home, where a watchman, backed up by armed security guards, keeps watch over the complex even when I’m not there. But whether or not I am there doesn’t ensure my children’s security. And I am among the few lucky and privileged parents in SA.
The parents of murder victim Uyinene Mrwetyana, 19, a University of Cape Town student, are probably blaming themselves for not keeping her safe. They probably think that had they driven her to the Clareinch post office in Cape Town, she would still be alive. That is where, instead of collecting a parcel, she met the monster who caused her death.
But her parents would be wrong to blame themselves.
It is not their fault that Mrwetyana was raped and killed in cold blood by a suspect who is 42, not much younger than her own father.
While they bury their daughter at Centane village in the Eastern Cape this week, others will also be burying loved ones — victims of a country that values the freedom of criminals more than the lives of law-abiding citizens.
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