Can Mphilwenhle tragedy wake us?
THE name Mphilwenhle means a good life. When Mphilwenhle Mavimbela graced the earth 16 years ago, that was all she deserved. A basic, safe and good life. But today we write of a life cut short by a harrowing murder.
It has been a week since the story of the murder broke, but I have sleepless nights thinking about it. I have more agony when I look around and see a society seemingly moving on despite perhaps one of the worst tragedies in recent years.
Have we gone numb? Have we accepted Gender-Based Violence (GBV) as a norm? Oh, it is another GBV killing, we can’t do anything to stop such. It happened at Thulwane and I do not know the area nor do I know the deceased so I will move on with my life. Is that who some of us have become?
We no longer call for justice, show concern or support those who have suffered a loss, but we move on?
A daughter, a sister and a community member has died and apart from the community search for the alleged killer, most of us have simply moved on.
No lengthy Facebook posts discouraging this in future, no symposiums called by activists, no reward being put out by society for finding the killer. Nothing. This is depressing. Here is why.
A Mphilwenhle growing up in the sunshine-filled and peaceful Kingdom of Eswatini ideally should be a beneficiary of numerous aggregators that ensure that she has a basic quality of life and lives to her life expectancy barring any natural disasters or accidents.
Her life is not meant to be cut short by anyone. So in the most basic of terms, she has a right to live. It is not just the responsibility of the government that young children should grow up in proper environments but yours and mine even at the community level.
While we have been infatuated with high-level politics since the social unrest, it seems we allowed a dereliction of our basic duties as community members to support the upbringing of the young ones in our society.
THREATENING
Perhaps if we still had closer-knit societies, the first time Mphilwenhle raised an alarm, a whole delegation of residents would have attended to it and extinguished the criminal elements threatening her education and now sadly leading to her death. Perhaps if you missed the story here is what happened.
According to the Times of Eswatini’s March 15, 2024 edition, the 16-year-old girl died after being stabbed, banged against a wall and hit with pieces of bricks, allegedly by a man who kept harassing her. The suspect, aged 39, allegedly committed this offence after being released on bail following a charge of statutory rape linked to the deceased.
The spine-chilling incident happened on Wednesday at Thulwane, under Mafutseni Constituency in the Manzini Region.
Apart from the statutory rape, the suspect was out on bail on two murder charges, as he was arrested for purportedly killing teenage girls – one in Matsapha and the other at Thulwane.
According to a source close to the matter, Mphilwenhle Mavimbela dropped out of school in Form III last year as the suspect would waylay her on the way from school and force her to his home, where he kept her for days without her consent.
OFFENSIVE
In February 2024, President Cyril Ramaphonsa, on one of his charm-offensive story-telling brilliance, took us on a journey of a child called Tintswalo born in South Africa after the Apartheid era. He took us through her early years up until employment, highlighting the benefits the young girl got from being born in a country with a ‘caring’ government. Listening to the analogy, I reflected on our own Tintswalos and wondered if we had such a story to tell.
With child-headed homesteads mostly run by young girls, some struggling to get back to class if not on the OVC grant and some dropping out of school to be maids, I wondered if the country offers a good life for a young girl.
Reading the subsequent stories on the Mphilwenhle tragedy, it is alleged that the suspect had been bullying the young girl such that she dropped out of school.
I wondered why a community and a society would allow a right to education to be hindered by a careless, thoughtless and selfish man.
I wondered, if the allegations are true, why a person who is supposed to be a father, brother or uncle would choose to taint the future of the bright-eyed 16-year-old instead of protecting her and assisting in her upbringing.
ABUSED
While today it’s an unknown 16-year-old to you, tomorrow it could be a relative, friend or child.
‘If it was your daughter, abused or killed, you would be on the streets calling for even harsher sentences than the current SODV Act has now.’
This statement was made five years ago by a government official at a symposium on the SODV in Ezulwini. It was met by pin-drop silence.
This statement rings true today as I feel we need to snap out of our comatose and do better for all regardless of who they are.
I live in a community in which we have been held hostage by gangs and unscrupulous characters such that after 7 pm we rarely move past our
gates.
Despite reporting that we had not seen any change in our life, we then accepted that we were hostages. But last month a tragic incident happened in which a life was taken by the same gangs.
A long-time resident was brutally murdered. The community united and called for an end to the reign of terror we had been under.
After that murder, we saw police descend into the community and also engage us in crime prevention strategies.
The death, as terrible as it was and one we will never heal from, woke up a community to say enough is enough. Today we have community police and the community is somewhat safer even though I still do not leave after 7pm.
But we do not need a death to speak up.
We do not need a loss of life to unite and protect each other as communities.
WAKE-UP
We need to be proactive rather than reactive. The tragedy of this girl should ordinarily be a wake-up call if, like my community, you still have residents who care.
It should be a zenith moment for activists to come up with campaigns like the Mphilwenhle declaration that no young girl should be stopped from going to school and each resident should check on the next Mphilwenhle’s if we do not see them going to school. We should care.
We should work hard to ensure that we root out this despicable rot from our societies. We should ensure that when a Mphilwenhle is born, she grows in an environment that allows her to flourish and live a ‘good life.’ We can and we must do better for the Mphilwenhle’s of this world.