Scratching the surface of the news with a seven-day Acumen Media report by Tonya Khoury.
What’s wrong with us? When a group of people do something more than any other group of people on the planet, they get a name: Specialists. Prize winners. Award gatherers. But what do we call them when their expertise is rape and murder? We call that #CryTheBelovedCountry.
And what do we call it when our Premier Panyaza Lesufi tells us not to get emotional about the 10 (some say nine – who’s counting)? bodies of battered and unclothed dead women found on one highway in less than a month?
Also what do you call it when President Cyril Ramaphosa, a dense cake shaped liked a cup, has already announced #GBV to be #NationalDisaster years and years ago and now he has a sick note?
Also what do we call it when there are intimations that this serial killers – oops ,there I said it – is behind all of those murders and he may be a foreigner? Ah, well, that is elections. I finally know an answer.
It’s me, Tonya, and I’m here scratching the surface as I swallow down another hard-to-take pill of deep sadness:
We burn her name in the back
Anything with her name attached
And then: Her newspaper’s in the trash
I just keep thinking, man
What a waste, what a shame
~ Sophia Isella
She was jogging, she was in her own home, the baby was in its cot, she was at work, she was out enjoying herself. What was she wearing? Did she lock the door? Did she have a camera on the baby, did she check in at work security points? Where was her pepper spray, didn’t she have a tazer? STOP, ENOUGH!
Last night I heard the screaming
Loud voices behind the wall
Another sleepless night for me
It won’t do no good to call
The police always come late
If they come at all
~ Tracy Chapman
The biggest story in South Africa today, with over 168K inserts and a million engagements, this is one of the biggest stories this year. And our journalists and our talk show hosts are having an election field day; our female politicians are posing for photos that intimates they too have had a man clip their wings.
How did we get here, what are we doing? Scoring votes? Are you quite mad? We have genocidal proportion crime stats. Today, over a 110 women will be raped. Ten women will be murdered and four children (under four) will be raped and killed.
Occupy his office
And what is our main priority? Oh crime for sure, let’s put it on show at a commission and everyone will be lulled into the fantasy of justice. Sorry, Justice Madlanga, but you of all people know what I mean.
And what do we do, you and I, when we read headlines? We’re shocked, we cry, we pray, we march, we wear black, but we never go to the union buildings and occupy the office of the cake of the cup? Why?
Feroz Cachalia came out like the squirrel who survived winter, frail and moot. I mean, is he even a minister or not? We haven’t worked that out. Fani Masemola is cleared and Senzo Mchunu never passes a journalist’s lips. You know the cops are bought. Bought so much that they are not even bribeable anymore. They are the gangsters.
When I used to see my daddy beat
My mother down, down to her feet
I used to say that ain’t gon’ never be me
Now look at you bruised up from him
Girl recognize you’re better than him tellin’ you
That he’ll never hit you again, girl don’t cry
~ Mary J Blige
Then they called for the army to lock down Ekurhuleni. Lock it down? You’re locking down a whole city because you think there’s a serial killer when we all know it’s just another killer? I mean, you are a serial killer, after two, or is it three, murders? What the actual?
Lock down men
Lock down all men, leave us chicks to keep doing what we need to do. And that won’t work, will it? So how about this, we all know a woman who has suffered by the hands of a particular man; we all know a man who hits women. How about we hold them accountable?
Let’s start by doxing them. And when I say “we” I mean the men of good fibre in our country, protect us. Don’t kill us. Call these cowards out, make them subject to capital punishment, and if they’re rapists, castrate them, and if they are kiddie fiddlers, lock them up for life in a prison so dark it never sees daylight.
Calls her man the great white hope
Well it’s a world gone crazy
Keeps woman in chains
Trades her soul as skin and bones
Sells the only thing she owns, oh oh
Woman in chains
Men of stone
~ Tears for Fears
MacG said Tsontso didn’t run fast enough. Boycott the pratt. The day after the release of this harrowing story, male joggers came out to run in a protective wall around women in the morning. Men in their hundreds protected our women, they were safe. You see? Men of South Africa, good men of South Africa, rise! Leave MacG where he belongs: a link on social media. It’s a world gone crazy that keeps women in chains.
Heavy-lifting by the police (not)
ACTING (such an interesting word) Police Commissioner Fred Kekana (we saw this crook at Madlanga), appealed to the public, saying, “If someone saw something, they must say something. We cannot keep picking up bodies like this.” An award, please, for all the heavy lifting the police did.
I saw a protest where women were shouting out what had happened to them and when, most were little kids and others in the later years. Violence chooses women and children and forgets their names and ages.
We were told to “try to stay alive” and that government have launched… wait for it… an ePanic button. An app you use on your phone that with one button pushed the police will arrive, like that genie in the lamp, hey?
I wonder if Tsontso would have had the time to push the button and told the perp to please wait for police to arrive. The Taxi Association is going into Kempton Park and taking names, the taxi association.
I know a girl whose taxi wouldn’t stop when she was the last passenger. He drove to a location where his mates were waiting, and she was gang raped at gunpoint. Don’t believe all you read ,people. This rot is so deep it needs chopping.
It’s under my skin but out of my hands
I’ll tear it apart but I won’t understand
I will not accept the greatness of man
So Free Her
~ Tears for Fears
It seems ridiculous to talk about other news. The ANC’s own last-minute workflow left their final submission to the deadline costing 181 candidates across six municipalities, with the some areas having the ANC completely off the ballot. Doesn’t seem like a bad plan to me.
Tosser Ed Sheeran
Across the seas, there is only one story and that is Ed Sheeran is even more of a tosser than we thought. The musicians supporting his show all pulled out, citing commitment to justice for Palestine, that they would no longer support a Zionist.
So that’s something. Oh and Pink did an Ed too, and we cancelled her faster than you can push the e-panic button.
Deep in your heart there are wounds time can’t heal
And I feel
Somebody somewhere is trying to breathe
Well you know what I mean
It’s a world gone crazy
Keeps woman in chains
~ Tears for Fears
Rise, my South African men, show us how you can protect us. Rise, my South African women, do not be defeated, do not show fear. Rise, my South Africa, ignore the electioneering and rise!
I’m off next week for Heritage Day weekend, so I’ll see you beginning of October. The year has moved at lightning speed.
Stay safe and don’t take kak. That’s me, I’m out.
I’m Tonya Khoury and thank you for scratching the surface with me and Acumen Media.
