A township setting, an uneducated black man (perhaps an uncle) raping a younger black girl. This is the stereotype, the information given to you by the media.
How necessary is this information? What is the focus here? Has our country fallen so far backward that the colour of the perpetrator and that of the victim outweigh the crime?
A township setting, an uneducated black man (perhaps an uncle) raping a younger black girl. This is the stereotype, the information given to you by the media.
How necessary is this information? What is the focus here? Has our country fallen so far backward that the colour of the perpetrator and that of the victim outweigh the crime?
Rape is not about colour. It is about an absolute breach of personal space and the wreckage of a life. Rape is real, it exists. It happens to thousands of men, women and children every day.
It is not just a statistic. Rape is personal. Do not allow the media to dehumanise you, never become ‘immune’.
The very essence of our humanity lies in our ability to reason and sympathise and the media often robs us of this sympathy.
If the people who commit these crimes don’t possess it somewhere deep within them, we need to have enough of it within us to uphold society ourselves.
We need to fight against this dehumanising effect, and take rape off the headline shelf and place it safely into the cabinet of our hearts and minds.
Imagine being 16 years old. Boys, clothes and gossip. Now, imagine walking home to mom after school. That old family friend sidles up beside you.
There’s darkness in his eyes you haven’t noticed before. Suddenly you’re dragged into his house; the sudden movement makes you dizzy with confusion.
But then the blackness in his eyes escapes, it flows into the room and envelops you in a suffocating smother.
Slowly this hunter begins to skin you, every ounce of dignity and humanity lies broken on the floor, your being tears through your skin in shards of hard, sharp pain, smashing on the floor.
He rapes you, and when he’s done, lies back satisfied and tells you you can leave. As you go, the bubble wrap protecting your being abandons its precious cargo.
Now tell me, does the colour of this man or of this girl really matter? Agreed, we have come out of apartheid where race was all that mattered, but have we not crossed that bridge?
Do we not owe these countless survivors a little more respect? This happened in our community just over a week ago. A matric girl was gang-raped by six men.
The next time you read about a rape, remember this story. Think of everyone you know, think of yourself. Be brave enough to be there in that room, as an observer, or as the prey.
Feel the fear and watch the life slip out. Don’t let each story simply increase or decrease the percentage of rape, let each story be a story that affects you personally. Let each ounce of humanity.
