Parents’ behaviour shows communities accept sex crimes
Women and children not safe while abusers are defended
Last Thursday, final matric exams at JE Ndlovu High School in KwaMashu, KwaZulu-Natal, were interrupted by protesting parents. Unlike in other parts of the country, where the protests disrupting matric exams are about service delivery, at this school the protest was in support of a male teacher who is accused of having romantic relationships with his students.
Yes, parents were protesting in support of a man who is under investigation for being a predator who preys on their own children.
These men and women were prepared to destroy the futures of their children by halting final exams that determine whether or not they will access higher education, in defence of a man who is accused of preying on their children.
The MEC of education, Mbali Frazer, was forced to intervene and plead with the parents to allow the exams to sit. The parents, who had prevented all staff members (except the male teacher who is accused by his own colleagues of dating pupils) from entering the school premises, ultimately allowed matrics to write their exams.
But they remained resolute in their demand that the alleged predator must continue to teach their children.
The tragedy in this story is not only that parents support a man accused of such a horrific crime, but that they are willing to put their own children’s futures on the line to lend support to such a man.
KwaMashu, like all other townships in the country, is faced with high levels of unemployment and poverty.
Education is the only vehicle that young people in the township have to escape the debilitating conditions of their existence and plough back into the community to help in its development. And yet parents, fully formed adults, are willing to sacrifice this in protection of a man so morally reprehensible.
In another country, this would be shocking. But this is SA. In our country, a man who was accused of rape [and acquitted] would go on to become president, supported by the women’s league of his party before and after his trial.
In our country, hundreds of congregants stood outside the Port Elizabeth high court every day during the trial of evangelist Timothy Omotoso, supporting him as he faced 97 charges including human trafficking and rape.
In our country, Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng, the vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, the premier university of the continent, accused a rape victim of having an “agenda” when she spoke out against her alleged perpetrator.
In our country, a man who was convicted of the rape of a minor in 2008 was elected mayor of Kannaland, having won elections in his ward and receiving the most votes of all ward councillors in the said local municipality.
In such a country, the actions of the parents in KwaMashu should not come as a shock to anyone.
And yet, even in this state of desensitisation that many of us are in, it is impossible not to be moved to anger by the actions of these parents because in supporting such a man, they are effectively consenting to their daughters being groomed and sexually abused.
The legal age of consent in our country might be 16, but a person under the age of 18 is still classified as a child by law. But these numbers are arbitrary in that even at these ages, maturity and reasoning capacity is generally not adequately advanced.
Anyone with a 16- to 18year-old child or sibling can attest to this. And for as long as perpetrators of sexual violence continue to receive support like they so often do, we must forget about a country where women and children are safe.