All my New Year's resolutions to take a daily dose of valium and sink into a deep oblivion as a shield against SA's comedy-farce-tragedy political stage, came to a halt with the Neanderthal rape of the young Indian woman in New Dehli. That this tragedy set my blood-pressure sky-rocketing and my pulse racing, has a lot to do with the fact that SA rape statistics are even worse than those of India. (Yesterday there was a news report of two Limpopo kids, aged 3 and 4, being raped!)
As a human being, woman and former medical student, the Limpopo/ India news just left me shaking my head.
When the news came that the young raped woman had died, it was almost a relief that she was now beyond suffering.
I have never before thought of comparing India and SA, but the more I thought about it, the clearer it became that the two countries have much in common. As I looked at the dirty laundry lists of the two countries, the more I convinced I became, that we are indeed country cousins.
The political orders in both countries today, are the results of liberation movements. Both countries were led to victory by saintly and righteous figures of Mandela and Gandhi. That both countries landed up having paper democracies has a lot to do with the nature of the liberation movements and the fact, that behind these galleon figures stood morally compromised figures who all to soon lost all sense of fairness as they got their hands into the cash registers of the respective countries.
Both countries are now burdened with corrupt and incompetent governments that are tone deaf to the needs and wishes of the people.
Bothe countries have huge sections of the population that are saturated with deeply patriarchal and misogynist views as regards women and children.
Both India and SA have police forces which function on a comedy- farce level in ordinary everyday life. In critical situations, where intelligent judgement is required, they come out with guns blazing.
In a strange way, India and SA meet each other again. Whereas India is a womanless or partnerless society (female embryos are often deliberately aborted, with the result that there are 15 million partnerless men who circulate in packs, inflicting sexual violence where ever they can.), SA is a fatherless society.
SA has huge numbers of teenage pregnancies, where the fathers (mostly teenagers as well), make themselves into dust, even before the child is born. Child alimony is an illusion. The single mothers, children themselves, can hardly cope. The disciplinary hand of a man is sadly lacking. All to often the little man, to replace the missing father figure, is placed on a patriarchal pedestal and the vicious circle of abusive rights and neglect are perpetuated.
What happens in the family is again played out in society.
Schools are supposed to be educative and socializing. What shall I say, shall I laugh or shall I cry. The educational system under the ANC limps from disaster to disaster. If the schoolroom is a mud hut and the teacher only wants a job, not work, can anything educative in the broadest sense emerge?
Without getting into specifics about our present president, (homophobic, dog yaps and 16th century values as regards women), we cannot expect anything educative from him, because he is so morally compromised, that every time he opens his mouth, one either has to laugh or weep. "He knows not what he knows not" and that is BAD.
Yes, the ANC government has much to answer for but we individuals and families have got to start looking at the ways we are educating our children, especially the boys. Are we turning them into the fine young men that they should be, or are we training them through neglect/stupidity/ to become unappetizing machos, sexists and at the very worst rapists.
A good example teaches more than a thousand words.
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