Last week was a wonder.
There was visible policing on the highways, there were fighter aircraft overhead in Johannesburg – some of the traffic lights worked, too, and you could see freshly painted road markings.
We can do it, despite all the supposed evidence to the contrary, which is why last Friday – and, indeed, today are so significant.
Last Friday was purple, a South African initiative cleverly timed to coincide with the G20 to bring attention to gender-based violence (GBV).
Today is the start of the global 16 Days of No Violence Against Women and Children.
GBV is an absolute scourge. It’s indefensible and unconscionable.
It’s a disgrace, particularly in a country which has such a history of institutionalised oppression and, indeed, labours under the burden of single parent households, almost entirely mothers.
But this is where we are. It seems to be ineradicable.
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There are wonderful interventions, stirring speeches, black-and-white ribbons of solidarity and purple daubed selfies on social media, but women will still get beaten within an inch of their lives this weekend.
They still have to hand over their debit cards to their partners. They still have to slake their partners’ lusts.
The worst of all is the dishonesty of the rest of us; because one of the unique aspects of GBV is that it is wreaked by intimate partners, which means that it’s happening under the noses of other family members but no-one does anything; no-one speaks up.
If we want to do something, we must do something. We can’t just wish it away.
We need to be unequivocal, not endure more academic treatises and sociological hand-wringing about GBV’s origins and its prevalence – if someone hits a woman or abuses a child, they get punished.
If they kill them, society throws away the key. But then that means that everyone must be equal before the law – the fact that they aren’t is part of the problem.
The other part is that the good laws that we already have in place are neither uniformly, nor consistently applied.
If we can get visible policing – and fighter pilots in the air despite the many storied problems that the South African Air Force has had – surely we can get men to stop hitting women because they know they will get away with it – not just for the next 16 days or an extra five for the G20, but every day?
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