LETTER: Abused women have nothing to celebrate

So, another redundant Women’s Day holiday rolls around, with nothing to celebrate for SA women, who are continually and singularly failed by so many men in this country.

The asinine official lip service paid to the need for reduced gender-based violence in SA, while each even more horrific female rape or murder merely elicits further widespread calls for a greater, but ultimately utterly ineffective, police response, is nothing short of embarrassing.

That every horrific incident seems to generate a resulting, though somewhat understandable, focus by the powers that be on completely the wrong thing — for instance the zama zamas in the light of the recent sickening multiple gang rape of eight young women in Krugersdorp — means the focus has once again switched away from the deep, life-altering trauma these young women have experienced through no fault of their own.

I decry the realities of being a woman in SA, where so often male power, from whatever source, is used to denigrate, wound, humiliate and disempower women.  I am ashamed, I am outraged and, like so many of my female compatriots, I am not only despondent but very, very afraid.

Carole Mason
Houghton

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