In a country where a woman’s body can be found torched and tossed into a bush, where a mother can be raped, robbed or strangled in her own home, we are reminded that International Women’s Month and Human Rights Day are nothing more than talking points.
In South African cities, many recognise these days and celebrate. Others reflect on how far the country has come and back-slap each other because women can now vote.
But this month is also a stark reminder that our women are not free to walk alone, to drive alone at night, without fear infiltrating their thoughts.
Our impoverished women are even worse off. They live in forgotten spaces — places with no or infrequent electricity connections and dangerous roads. Places with police stations, clinics and hospitals dozens of kilometres away. In these areas, our women are frequently treated as second-class citizens.
Just last year, the Mail & Guardian spoke to a woman who was chased from her home because her son had been brutally attacked by men living in the same village. She refused to stay quiet. She sought justice.
The village men protected the perpetrators who terrorised her family, even when they tried to torch the family home. Noticeably absent from attempts to help the woman were the police, the local chief and provincial leadership. The woman fled her home and lives with death threats to this day.
In August 2019, Aviwe Wellem was raped and stabbed to death in her bedroom. DNA was present at the crime scene but, to date, the perpetrator has not been arrested. There was no media contingent covering this case. No ministers flew down to lament the tragedy of losing yet another Eastern Cape woman. Aviwe was 21 years old.
She was forgotten, buried with no headstone by an impoverished community. Aviwe became another statistic.
In this edition of the M&G, we report on 11 elderly residents who were murdered over a seven-month period in the Eastern Cape. It has taken police over a year to find the perpetrators. Throughout this time, the women of the village have sheltered in rondavels, terrified of the evil that may be lurking in the black of night. They are vulnerable and helpless. They know it, and so do the perpetrators.
Seven of those killed — Nowezile Mbovane, Nozaziyedwa Nontyida, Nowezile Yawa, Nowezile Khuphiso, Nokhesini Phunguphungu, Nondyebo Gingqini and Nosinothi Sibhozo — leave as their legacy being victims of serial murder.
But these women are not the only ones who have been forgotten in places too far-flung for the minister of police to reach for speedy photo opportunities, or for other politicians to use as a means to puff out their chests and vow to end violence against women.
These are our forgotten women: Poor, black, rural and ripe for picking off by predators. Predators who laugh at police incompetence and indifference, and use it to their advantage.
It will be August soon: South Africa’s Women’s Month. We will be told to celebrate our women again — their resilience, their strength. We will be told to nurture them. Girls will be told they can be anything they want to be.
But if we are not talking about the women who truly need our protection, who need our ears to listen and our microphones and pens to have their stories told, then we have failed. If we are not fighting for the women in the forgotten spaces, we are really not fighting at all.