It’s the daily subjugation of women in all its discriminatory, violent, and deadly manifestations.
Commenting on the rising number of women and children who have been killed since the start of the month, Latifa Jacobs, of One Billion Rising SA, said:
‘In South Africa, we are more at risk of being raped and killed than contracting Covid-19. We have a government who does not care about our lives, we have a government who is not able to protect our bodies … our president did not hear our pleas to not lift the ban on liquor. We have had quite a lot of domestic violence cases since the beginning of Covid, but those numbers have doubled if not tripled.’
(IOL, June 15, 2020)
A friend living in Cape Town shared the following meme. It is only intended to reflect the despairing mood among women in South Africa – who feel vulnerable and abandoned:
- Coronavirus kills 1000 people in 60 days, world goes mad. 3300 murdered in South Africa in 60 days, no one cares.
But they can be forgiven their utter despair. After all, even a moron like US President Donald Trump could foresee that keeping men in lockdown with little more to do than drink liquor all day will result in domestic abuse.
In fact, here is how I warned of what these South African women are complaining about in “Coronavirus: The Worldwide Lockdown,” March 14, 2020:
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Given the measures governments the world over are implementing to fight this virus, you’d think we were already in the death throes of not just a 1930s-like depression but a 14th Century-like bubonic plague. My fear is that it is all creating a self-fulfilling prophecy …
Meanwhile, nothing could prove more controlling and therefore subjugating in this context than prohibiting gatherings for sports, entertainment, educational, ecumenical, and corporate purposes outside the home – as many governments are doing.
Mind you, keeping men quarantined at home with no sports to watch on TV seems a perfect recipe for brewing anti-government resentments. Alas, this also seems a perfect storm for a wave of domestic abuse.
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Mind you, women everywhere are suffering similar domestic violence in this time of corona.
Indeed, so much so that my favorite member of the British Royal family issued an extraordinary clarion call for solidarity just this week:
Sophie Wessex has made an impassioned speech via video link at a United Nations (UN) event to highlight that sexual violence in the home or during conflicts is likely to have ‘risen substantially’ since lockdown began.
Speaking in an address to a UN forum on the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, Sophie called on the world to listen to the needs of survivors.
In her address, the 55-year-old royal said: ‘Since the pandemic began, the number of cases of sexual violence across conflict settings and in domestic settings are very likely to have risen substantially.’
(The Daily Mail, June 20, 2020)
I’m not sure what, if any, consolation that provides, but here we are. Still, I have a special place in my heart for the people of South Africa. So God help them.
Amandla!
Related commentaries:
worldwide lockdown… Covid-19 thread…
South Africa thread...