The play area at Dros in Silverton. Picture: Rudzani Matshili The play area at Dros in Silverton. Picture: Rudzani Matshili
South Africa has this week been transfixed by the tragic story of a child who was raped in a Pretoria restaurant last Saturday.
The anger has been extreme, the disgust palpable - the pity understated.
We should be angry, we should be disgusted and we should not just pity the poor girl who was so cruelly and viciously attacked.
We should move heaven and earth to ensure she has the best possible care; medically and therapeutically to emerge from this ordeal as best possible.
We should also ensure that the person who did this is removed from society for a very long time. Perhaps, we should even have a debate about the re-institution of the death sentence for crimes of this nature.
What we shouldn’t do - and unfortunately what we have done - is use this tragedy as a way to frame the continuing racial schisms in this country or destroy the NPA’s ability to successfully prosecute the accused by totally perverting this person’s constitutional right to a fair trial by behaving in a manner that is nothing short of mob justice.
Rape is a scandal. It is our national shame. It doesn’t matter who perpetrates or why they do it, neither aspect makes the act less or more heinous. We have to outlaw it once and for all, to render sexual violence as beyond the pale as murder.
We haven’t seen that this week; instead we have seen equivocation, virtue signalling and victim shaming - in some awful instances of the child’s mother - which is precisely why we will not turn the tide in this desperate war.
We have to speak as one, no one should be raped ever. Everyone should be safe - irrespective of where they are. And, as adults, we all have a responsibility to look out for children.
It’s not that difficult. Let’s make last Saturday’s tragedy the last.
* Kashiefa Ajam is the editor of The Saturday Star
** IOL will not name the suspect until he has pleaded to the charges against him.