Nothing I write today will change what happened, but maybe it can change your viewpoint.
There aren’t a lot of things in life that shock me anymore. Living in South Africa sensitises you to things that anywhere else in the world would cause shock and horror. Rape, murder and crime in general are met with a ‘meh’ whilst browsing social media or the newspaper and then we go on with our lives because if it didn’t happen to us, it doesn’t affect us.
Then came the story of a 7 year old girl allegedly being raped in a local restaurant bathroom. I could taste the disgust from the pit of my stomach pushing up when I read what happened because when you have a child, especially a daughter, you can’t help but think ‘what if it was her?’
The country was, and still is up in arms about it the incident and what do they do? They are either defending or celebrating the crime because of the colour of the perpetrator’s skin. Let me spell this out to anyone who is confused by what I just stated: Not the colour of your skin, the suburb you live in, the car you drive, the money you have or don’t have, the school or university you attended, the job you have or any other variable changes the fact that if you are a rapist, you are a rapist. Finish and klaar. Because if you would ever want to justify a horrible crime like this, by referring to any of those things, you are a horrible human being.
So as I sit here typing this column, I think of why things happen and why people do what they do. Nobody can answer that for me so all I can do is just give it a good ol ‘meh’ and carry on with my day.
