It is
Thursday just after 06:00 and I am on a train on my way to work. My phone went
of trice already, so I decided to check what is so important.
Two of the
messages are from a source, in the one he mentions the body of a child was
found and in the second he confirms it is that of Tazne van Wyk.
For a few seconds
I just sit quiet and pray: “Kyrie Eleison”.
During the
day I occasionally read the comments on social media. We are all upset, furious
and want answers!
Death
penalty is raised, Bundu-courts, taking the law into our own hands and we need
more prisons, is what many are saying.
It is on my
way home that I tell myself and eventually share on my social media platforms –
the death penalty is not the answer to the rape and murder in our country. The
two crimes are as old as humanity it has been here long before us and will likely
be here long after us.
As for
building of prisons, I feel it is an indirect encouragement for crime. We already
sit with a shortage of classrooms, why thus want more prisons?
What we do
need is classrooms. We need to tackle the social challenges in our communities.
Social programmes need to be revised and improved, especially those aimed on
the youth.
In parts of
the Western Cape there are youth cafes. The programmes presented there need to
be revised and need to accommodate programs addressing the specific needs in
that community. It is clear that the one approach for all is not working.
We, the
people who live in this country, are the answer. The day we stop to protect
criminal elements and perpetrators of domestic violence, looking the other way,
that is when we are addressing the actual problem.
When we
come forward with information and call out the names of those guilty, then we
implement something far bigger and better than the death penalty.
How many
don’t hear the conversations when walking by of a guy boasting how his girl jumps
when he talks.
How many don’t
hear how a girl confides in a friend about her boyfriend or husband who raised
his hand for her by accident.
It happens
once and then again and again and again. It becomes such a habit that when something
happens to her those around them will say: “no it happened regularly.”
The day you
hear it the first time and call out the name of the perpetrator, that is when
you give the deed the death penalty.
Then there
is the matter of just quickly sending your child to the shop, across the road
or just down the street. One of the train buddies best summarise the feeling as:
“If I cannot walk myself, then I can sit without it.”
The week Tazne
van Wyk’s body was discovered two other girls, Nabeelah Begg (16) from
Bonteheuwel and Mishaney Jansen (14) from Oudtshoorn, were reported missing.
It is also
just each time a child goes missing or is raped and/or murdered that there is
an outcry. Then we remember Lekita Moore, Rene Roman, Courtney Peters, Stacha
Arends, Stracey Adams, Kaithlyn Wilson, Lache Stols, Aqeel Davids, Ezra
Daniels, Shamonique Claasen, Jeremiah Ruiters and many others.
The shortcut
is then chosen, and government blamed. But when did we as society fail?
We need to do better. We need to act quicker and sooner.
You and me and everyone around us are and should be the answer.
- Original was published in Afrikaans on Thursday 27 February 2020 in Paarl Post as Post Scriptum
