I would like to introduce you to a few young South African women. Sheila Mosidi Kopanye from Hamanskraal. Ayanda Simelani from Kwa-Thema. Karabo Mokoena. Zolile Khumalo. Amanda Tweyi.
Unfortunately, they are all dead. In several postings, Sheila Mosidi Kopanye, cried out on social media about an ex-lover who was stalking her. That was before he stabbed her to death last month.
Some tavern patrons in Kwa-Thema, Springs, saw Ayanda Simelane desperately trying to fight back when a man was beating her up. I guess nobody wanted to get involved. That was before her body was found at Phomolo section last Saturday morning.
Earlier this week, a woman was reportedly dragged out of a taxi by an ex-boyfriend in Mofolo, Soweto.
That was before he allegedly shot her. She is now dead.
Karabo Mokoena fancied herself as a hair-product entrepreneur and motivational speaker to inspire fellow young people.
But that was before ex-boyfriend, Sandile Mantsoe, killed her, burnt her body and dropped the remains in the veld near Bramley. She was buried on May 19 last year.
In the week of Sandile Mantsoe’s conviction and sentencing, Zolile Khumalo, a quantity survey student at Mangosuthu University of Technology, was studying peacefully in her room.
That was before her ex-boyfriend walked in and allegedly shot her dead. She was buried on May 12 this year.
In 2014, Amanda Tweyi was killed by an ex-boyfriend in a student residence at Rhodes University. That he also shot himself dead was no consolation to the Tweyi family.
There are dozens more.
Last month, on May 18, I was driving home on the N1 South after a difficult workshop at the Pretoria offices of the National Research Foundation. By chance, I stumbled upon one of the SABC’s flagship commercial radio stations.
The presenters, Masechaba Ndlovu and Moeti Tsiki (Mo Flava) announced their special guest - the mercurial gqom dancer and singer, Bongekile Simelane, otherwise known as Babes Wodumo.
I was thinking that the compulsory kwaito education to which I have been subjected by my offspring would come in handy. I could not have been more wrong.
Whereas the interview was supposed to be about Wodumo’s latest release, it ended up being about allegations that Wodumo was in an abusive and violent relationship with her boyfriend and business partner, Mandla Maphumulo, aka Mampintsha.
The official audio podcast and a cellphone video-clip of this interview has since gone viral.
This depicts once again that, when it comes to violence against women, including femicide, we must be counted among the “leading nations” of the world, sadly.
And we have the stats to prove it. In 2016, Statistics South Africa reported that one in five South African women were assaulted by their partners.
The South African rate of femicide is five times higher than the global average. An analysis of SAPS murder statistics from April to December 2016 shows that a woman was murdered every four hours in South Africa.
In cases where the perpetrator was identified, up to 57% of the murders were found to have been committed by an intimate partner.
I would like to suggest that we as a nation have earned the right to be paranoid about, and intolerant of, gender violence and abusive relations.
The ongoing #MeToo campaign in the US and elsewhere has seen such powerful individuals as Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby being brought to book.
But it seems unlikely to gain much traction in South Africa.
Perhaps part of the reason for our underwhelming uptake is that far too often South African abusers go one step further, and take the lives of their victims.
For this reason alone, we as a nation ought to panic ourselves into action every time we hear allegations of women in abusive relationships.
We as a nation have seen again and again how such women, end up as half-naked corpses in dumping sites.
To return to the Masechaba Ndlovu and Mo Flava interview of Babes Wodumo: some people have expressed shock at the unconventional and robust manner in which Ndlovu and Mo Flava conducted the Wodumo interview. Quite frankly, I am shocked that they are shocked.
Given the rising body count of women killed by men, known and unknown, how dare we judge Ndlovu for her public outrage and public pledge of support for a young woman who is allegedly in a violent relationship?
Sometimes journalists must do more than take pictures. Sometimes they must show outrage. And sometimes they must show compassion and solidarity for victims.
During the interview, Ndlovu also said: “I can see it in your eyes (that) you are still suffering and I don’t want you to continue to suffer I hate to see a young woman as talented and as smart as you living in so much fear the day you are ready to tell your story, I will be there. I will be sitting in the front lines”
When Nina Simone, in her song Young, Gifted and Black, sang that “We must begin to tell our young, There’s a world waiting you, This is a quest that’s just begun”, she couldn’t have possibly included South Africa in her glorious vision.
Our urgent task is not only to tell our youth that they are young, gifted and black. It is not enough for us to gleefully tell them about “a world that is waiting” for them.
For that world is dangerous and deadly.
It is world in which they have to live with abusive men.
We must tell them the truth - that some of the most dangerous among these men could be boyfriends, partners and husbands.
Now that we have dispensed with the presidential 100-days-in-office festivities, it is time that we spoke frankly to President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government.
According to his speech at the launch, the current campaign is intended, among other things, to rekindle the spirit of volunteerism, to reconnect the ANC to the masses, to reposition ANC branches and to assist the ANC to reclaim its moral high ground.
Apart from feeling like phase one of the ANC’s 2019 election campaign, it feels as if the Thuma Mina campaign is intended to mobilise ANC members into some kind of permanent Mandela Day mode, where each one randomly picks a cause.
This is noble. It may serve the ANC’s 2019 election purposes well. After all the ANC seems to have effected a de facto split before, during and after its December 2017 conference.
We sympathise with President Ramaphosa as he tries to stitch the stubborn factions together.
While the Thuma Mina campaign may serve the ANC well, the country needs rather more than that.
Who will benefit from the president’s effort to improve the economic lot of youth and women when the rate of femicide is so high?
Of what use will be the fruit of the National Development Plan in 2030 if half the population will be dead while the rest live in terror?
We note all the grand plans that pertain to rooting out corruption and reviving the economy.
But to what end will all these be, while South African women have become an endangered demographic?
We urgently need a national gender violence strategy.
Until now we have relied on the judiciary and the criminal justice sector to deal with the scourge of femicide.
In her final words at the interview with Ndlovu and Mo Flava, Wodumo, who is the daughter of Bishop Mbongeni Simelane and Pastor Thokozile Simelane, said: “Unkulunkulu * zo ngi lwela, Unkulunkulu * ya ngi lwela” (God will defend me, God fights for me).
But as Steve Biko once said, “God is not in the habit of coming down from heaven to solve people’s problems on Earth”.
While the Wodumos of South Africa are waiting for God to intervene, will the government come up with a national gender violence strategy to stem the tide of femicide?
* Maluleke is a professor at the University of Pretoria and an Extraordinary Professor at the University of South Africa. He writes in his personal capacity. Follow him on Twitter @ProfTinyiko